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

Surplus-syllable hexameter

Meter
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 hexameter line with one or more extra syllables beyond scansion rules

Detailed Definition
Surplus-syllable hexameter is a variation of the traditional six-foot metrical line where one or more extra syllables are added, slightly breaking strict meter to create emphasis, elongate rhythm, or mirror organic speech. This expansion can lend a rolling, luxuriant feel to the verse, as in passages that require lingering over vivid description or emotional content.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Longfellow’s “Evangeline,” dactylic hexameter occasionally includes a surplus syllable for lyrical flow: “This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks” (13 syllables instead of 12); Classical Latin hexameter sometimes permits a spondaic substitution creating syllabic surplus, as in Virgil’s “Arma virumque cano”; In modern adaptations, Derek Walcott’s “Omeros” uses surplus-syllable hexameter to blend Homeric form with Caribbean speech rhythms; Contemporary poet Annie Finch employs surplus-syllable hexameter in “Calendars” to evoke ritual time; In “The Raven,” Poe’s trochaic octameter lines like “And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain” (16 syllables) function as a surplus-syllable hexameter analog in English stress-based meter.
Additional Notes
Surplus-syllable hexameter includes extra syllables beyond the standard six feet, often via elision or feminine endings. Contrast with shortened hexameter. May signal emotional overflow—read aloud to judge if the surplus enhances or disrupts rhythm.
Also Known As
Hyper-hexameter Extended scansion line Surplus hexameter Hexameter hypercatalectic
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