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.

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

sunder

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

To separate, divide, or break apart; to sever or split something into parts, often used in contexts of forceful division.

Detailed Definition
"Sunder" comes from Old English "sundrian," meaning to separate or divide, and appears throughout medieval and Renaissance poetry to convey dramatic acts of separation or breaking. The term carries emotional weight when describing the severing of bonds—lovers torn asunder, armies split, or souls divided from bodies. Poets valued "sunder" for its strong, monosyllabic impact and its ability to suggest violent or irreversible separation. It appears in epic poetry, ballads, and religious verse where themes of division, loss, and fragmentation predominate. The word's Germanic roots give it a forceful, elemental quality that enhances descriptions of physical destruction or emotional rupture, making it a powerful tool for conveying tragic or dramatic moments in verse.
Example
Example in poetry:
"To sunder" means to split apart or divide, often violently; Milton writes of how death sundered Adam from Paradise; "Those whom God hath joined, let no man sunder" echoes in marriage poetry; The sword's blow sundered shield from arm; Time and distance sunder lovers in countless elegies; Wordsworth describes how modern life sunders us from nature
Additional Notes
“Sunder” means to split or separate violently, often used in biblical or tragic contexts to convey emotional or physical rupture. In poetry, it amplifies themes of loss, parting, or divine judgement. Recognising its forceful connotation enriches readings of verse that explores human division or the breaking of bonds.
Also Known As
separate divide split part
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