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

Smitten

Disease
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

Struck suddenly by illness or powerful emotion; in poetry, it emphasizes a moment of passive affliction, where the character is overwhelmed by an external force.

Detailed Definition
Smitten has religious and literary associations of being struck down by disease, fate, divine judgment, or overwhelming emotion. In poetry, it can make illness feel abrupt and fateful, as though the sufferer has been singled out by an unseen force. The term also retains an alternate sense of being powerfully enamored, allowing poets to yoke love and affliction together. Its elevated tone suits biblical echoes, tragedy, and dramatic lyric speech.
Example
Example in poetry:
“She was smitten with fever before the harvest moon,” using smitten to mean suddenly afflicted; “Smitten by plague, the village bells fell silent” gives disease the force of a blow; A love poem can play on the double meaning in “smitten by love, as by a fever”; “The orchard stood smitten by frost” extends the word from human illness to natural damage
Additional Notes
Means suddenly struck or afflicted, often by disease, grief, or divine punishment. Unlike merely ill, smitten can imply suddenness and emotional force.
Also Known As
Afflicted Stricken smote
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