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

spleen

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

An organ; in archaic usage, the seat of emotions, particularly melancholy, anger, or ill humor; also caprice or spite.

Detailed Definition
"Spleen" refers anatomically to the abdominal organ but historically was considered the seat of various emotions and temperaments. Medieval humoral theory associated spleen with melancholy and black bile, making "the spleen" synonym for depression, ill humor, or anger. Renaissance poetry extensively explored spleen as emotional source—to "vent one's spleen" meant expressing anger, "suffering from spleen" meant melancholic. The term also meant caprice, spite, or sudden impulse. Poets valued its compact expression of complex emotional states rooted in physical theory. Shakespeare and contemporaries used it when depicting characters' temperamental conditions where humoral psychology explained personality and mood. The word's anatomical precision combined with emotional associations made it rich for exploring mind-body connections. Its use reflected historical beliefs about physiology's role in psychology, where organs generated emotions. The term appears in contexts of anger, melancholy, or capricious behavior where archaic physiological vocabulary provided concrete imagery for abstract emotional states. Its continuing metaphorical usage preserves obsolete medical theory in linguistic fossil form.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Renaissance poetry, the spleen was considered the seat of melancholy and ill humor; Robert Burton wrote extensively of the spleen's role in black moods; "Venting one's spleen" meant releasing anger or bitter feelings; The poet's spleen erupted in savage satire against his critics; Milton describes Satan's spleen as he contemplates his fall; A fit of spleen overcame the lover when his lady scorned him
Additional Notes
In early modern thought, the “spleen” was considered a centre of emotion, particularly linked to melancholy or ill temper. Poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often invoked it to personify moodiness, passion, or caprice. Knowing this helps modern readers grasp metaphors where “spleen” conveys emotional turbulence rather than the literal organ.
Also Known As
anger melancholy temper resentment
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