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

Sluys

Battles
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

A 1340 English naval victory over France in the Hundred Years’ War, establishing early English sea control.

Detailed Definition
Sluys demonstrated the power of longbowmen at sea and secured English Channel dominance. In poetry, it symbolizes the rise of naval power and the projection of land tactics onto water—appearing in medieval and national verse as a moment when wooden ships became floating fortresses, shaping England’s island identity and its future as a maritime empire.
Example
Example in poetry:
Sluys, 1340 English naval victory, appears in medieval chronicles as sea chivalry’s dawn; A modern sonnet might frame Sluys’ channel as first English claim to naval power; In a dramatic lyric, a Genoese crossbowman recalls chained ships at Sluys; A free-verse elegy could mourn the 16,000 French and Genoese lost in Sluys’ waters; Contemporary poets use Sluys to reflect on early naval tactics; A haiku might capture tides washing over Sluys’ forgotten wreckage.
Additional Notes
Sluys (1340) gave England early naval dominance in the Hundred Years’ War; in medieval and Tudor poetry, it symbolizes the rise of English sea power and the strategic importance of controlling the Channel—a precursor to later maritime triumphs like Trafalgar.
Also Known As
Battle of Sluys Battle of l’Écluse
Skip to main content