A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter S

shrive

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

To hear confession of sins and grant absolution as a priest; to confess one's sins to obtain forgiveness; related to the sacrament of penance and reconciliation.

Detailed Definition
“Shrive” frames spiritual cleansing—“ere I shrive me.” In religious poetry, it marks preparation for death or renewal. The term’s weight suits penitential tone. Poets use it to explore guilt and grace, where shriving restores order, reinforcing themes of redemption, secrecy, and divine mercy in meditative and dramatic contexts.
Example
Example in poetry:
“He went to shrive before the battle,” in a chivalric custom; In Shakespeare’s Henry V: “Not today, O Lord, / O, not today, think not upon the fault / My father made in compassing the crown!... / I Richard’s body have interrèd new, / And on it have bestowed more contrite tears / Than from it issued forced drops of blood... / Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, / Who twice a day their withered hands hold up / Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built / Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests / Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do; / Though all that I can do is nothing worth, / Since that my penitence comes after all, / Imploring pardon”—a form of shriving; “She sought to shrive her soul of secret sin”; “The priest would not shrive the unrepentant”; “Shrive thy heart before thou judgest others”; The dying man was shriven at midnight.
Additional Notes
“Shrive” is central to Catholic penitential practice; in devotional or confessional poetry, “shriven souls” attain grace, while unshriven deaths imply damnation—making it a key term in moral and eschatological frameworks.
Also Known As
confess absolve
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