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

swound

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

A swoon or fainting fit; loss of consciousness; also used as a verb meaning to faint or lose consciousness, in archaic or poetic language.

Detailed Definition
"Swound" (also "swoon," "sound") derives from Old English "geswōgen" (overcome), meaning a fainting fit or loss of consciousness, and as a verb, to faint. The term appears extensively in romance and sentimental literature where characters swounded from emotion, shock, or physical distress. Its archaic quality made fainting seem more dramatic and literary than clinical. Poets employed "swound" when depicting extreme emotional or physical responses requiring elevated language—ladies swounded at bad news, knights swounded from wounds. The word's associations with sensibility, delicacy, and dramatic response made it appropriate for heightened emotional contexts. Its use often signaled genre—romance, Gothic literature, sentimental fiction—where fainting functioned as conventional response to overwhelming experience. The term's archaic dignity elevated what might otherwise seem merely medical or weak, making swooning romantic rather than pathological.
Example
Example in poetry:
An archaic word for swoon or faint, often from emotion; In Spenser's verse, fair maidens swound at fearful sights; The knight fell in a swound upon hearing of his lady's death; Medieval romances feature characters who swound from passion or grief; She swounden dead away at the dreadful news; The heat and horror made the soldiers swound upon the field
Additional Notes
“Swound” or “swoon” denotes fainting, a common trope in medieval and Renaissance literature to express extreme emotion or spiritual rapture. Poets used it to heighten drama or signal vulnerability, especially in romantic or devotional scenes. Awareness of its archaic form helps appreciate its rhythmic and emotive effect in older texts.
Also Known As
faint swoon collapse unconsciousness
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