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 T

The grass is always greener

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

An idiom expressing the perception that other people's circumstances appear more desirable than one's own, highlighting human tendency toward envy and dissatisfaction with current conditions despite objective reality.

Detailed Definition
The grass is always greener means other people’s lives, places, choices, or possessions often seem better than one’s own from a distance. In poetry, the idiom is useful for envy, nostalgia, migration, romantic dissatisfaction, and restless longing. The grass image suggests visual illusion and comparative desire: what is far away appears lush because the viewer lacks full knowledge. A poet may use it to explore discontent, idealisation, and the human tendency to undervalue the ground beneath one’s feet.
Example
Example in poetry:
A love poem might warn that the grass is always greener beyond the garden wall; In a migration poem, the exile learns the grass is always greener in imagined countries; The phrase means other lives often seem better than one's own; A poet can use it for longing and illusion.
Additional Notes
The grass is always greener suggests that other people’s lives, places, or choices seem more desirable from a distance. In poetry, it suits envy, exile, nostalgia, restless love, migration, and dissatisfaction. The phrase depends on perspective: the neighbouring field looks lush because it is not being lived in. Students should ask whether desire reveals genuine deprivation or illusion. It pairs well with fences, fields, gardens, windows, and comparative longing.
Also Known As
envy
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