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

Soldier

Military
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 soldier is a person who serves in an army, the fundamental human figure at the center of military conflict.

Explore this topic in depth (1)

War Poetry — War poetry is not a single style or political position. This guide explores how poets respond to conflict through public ceremony, private testimony, grief, protest, formal experiment and sound.

Detailed Definition
The soldier stands as the essential human subject of nearly all war poetry, the individual through whom abstract concepts of duty, nationalism, and sacrifice become concrete and personal. Poets across centuries have used the soldier to explore themes ranging from heroic glory to devastating trauma, particularly as war poetry evolved from celebratory epic toward unflinching depictions of suffering, as seen in the work of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.
Example
Example in poetry:
Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon centered their war poetry on the soldier as its essential human subject; A poem might follow a single soldier's journey from idealistic enlistment to disillusioned survival; Poets use "soldier" to explore duty, nationalism, and sacrifice made concrete through individual experience; A verse could contrast the soldier's private fears with the public glory attached to service; The term appears throughout poetic history, from heroic epic to unflinching modern war critique; Historical war poetry sometimes uses the soldier to bear the full emotional weight of conflict.
Additional Notes
A soldier is a person who serves in an army, the fundamental human figure at the center of military conflict. The soldier is the individual who fights, suffers, and often dies, the human cost of war. In poetry, the soldier is the subject, the everyman whose experience is universal. Related terms include infantryman, combatant, and warrior. The soldier's perspective—their fears, hopes, and memories—is the core of war literature. The term evokes sacrifice, camaraderie, and the brutal reality of service. The soldier's story is the story of war itself, told in personal terms.
Also Known As
Warrior Fighter Trooper Serviceman Infantryman Enlisted Man Private
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