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 U

undern

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

The third hour of the day, around 9 AM; also noon or mid-morning, with meanings varying regionally and historically in medieval timekeeping.

Detailed Definition
"Undern" derives from Old English "undern" (originally the third hour after sunrise, approximately 9 AM), though its meaning varied historically and regionally, sometimes meaning noon or mid-morning. Medieval poetry used it when specifying times where liturgical hours and solar time reckoning mattered. The term's flexibility and eventual obsolescence reflected changing timekeeping practices—mechanical clocks replaced solar reckoning, making terms like "undern" unnecessary. Poets depicting medieval life employed such vocabulary for authentic period atmosphere, acknowledging that historical cultures divided and named time differently. The word appears in contexts of daily routine, religious observance, or narrative timing where approximate hour designation served structural purposes. Its archaic quality and semantic uncertainty made it valuable primarily for atmosphere rather than precision—"undern" signaled medieval setting more than exact time. The term exemplifies how temporal vocabulary changes with technology and culture, preserving obsolete timekeeping systems in literary language.
Example
Example in poetry:
The third hour of the day, about 9 AM, or midmorning; Medieval poetry marks the canonical hours including undern; The monks gathered at undern for their prayers; Langland mentions undern in "Piers Plowman" as a time for work; By undern the sun had burned away the morning mist; The market opened at undern with merchants' cries
Additional Notes
“Undern” referred variously to mid-morning or noon, depending on period and region. It was one of the canonical hours of prayer, linking it to monastic life and religious rhythms. Poets might use it to mark the passage of time or to evoke pastoral tranquillity. Understanding historical time divisions deepens awareness of temporal imagery in medieval texts.
Also Known As
midday noon lunchtime mid-morning
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