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

Speel

Dialect
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 climb; especially to climb a tree, wall, or hill with agility and effort.

Detailed Definition
"Speel" is a vigorous, physical word for the act of climbing, and its sound conveys the effort and energy of the action. In Scots poetry it appears in contexts of childhood adventure, pastoral movement through landscape, and the physical engagement with the natural world that characterises much Scottish verse. The word suggests not merely ascent but the bodily pleasure of climbing, the grip and reach of hands and feet finding purchase, and it brings poems of landscape alive with human physical presence and effort.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Speel" means to climb; A poet might write: "The bairn speeled up the old beech tree — / as free and light as light can be." for a childhood poem; "She speeled the brae wi' ageing legs — / the hill still called, the heart still begs." explores persisting ambition in older age; "Speel high enough and ye'll see far — / past field and parish, burn and bar." uses climbing as intellectual metaphor; "He speeled tae the ridge before the dawn — / and stood there, all his waiting gone." makes climbing a spiritual act; "The goat speeled effortless and clean — / above the world, serene and keen." applies the word to animal grace
Additional Notes
Speel is a verb of cheerful, energetic physical effort — the kind of climbing that involves arms and legs working together, the body using whatever holds are available. It differs from the more neutral "climb" in suggesting both agility and a certain pleasure in the activity. In pastoral verse it appears in descriptions of boys climbing trees or walls, in accounts of hill-walking and exploration. For students, "speel" is part of a vocabulary of active, physical engagement with landscape that is characteristic of Scots poetry — the body does not merely contemplate the landscape but scrambles up it, wades through it, digs it, and ploughs it. Compare with "hirple" (to limp or hobble) for a contrasting mode of physical movement.
Also Known As
Climb Scramble Clamber
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