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

Stiff upper lip

Idiomatic Phrase
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

Stiff upper lip denotes showing courage, restraint, and emotional control in adversity, often associated with British stoicism; in poetry, it explores repression, dignity, and the cost of suppressing vulnerability.

Detailed Definition
Stiff upper lip means emotional restraint, stoicism, and the refusal to show fear, grief, or pain, especially associated with British cultural ideals. In poetry, the idiom is useful in war poetry, elegy, family memory, and poems about duty. It may honour courage under pressure, but also question the cost of silence and repression. The bodily image of the controlled lip suggests feeling held back at the threshold of speech. It is useful for exploring dignity, endurance, class, and hidden sorrow.
Example
Example in poetry:
A war poem might portray the soldier's stiff upper lip as courage and loneliness together; In satire, the stiff upper lip may hide fear, grief, and unspoken tenderness; The phrase means controlled emotional restraint; A poet can use it to examine British reserve.
Additional Notes
Stiff upper lip is a British idiom for emotional restraint and courage under adversity. In poetry, it can represent stoicism, class training, imperial manners, wartime endurance, or repression. The lip is the visible border of speech and feeling; keeping it stiff prevents trembling or complaint. Students should ask whether such control is admirable dignity or damaging silence. It pairs well with uniforms, tea, letters, grief, and unshed tears.
Also Known As
stoic
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