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 W

wether

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 castrated male sheep, especially one raised for meat or wool; distinct from rams (intact males) and ewes (females).

Detailed Definition
"Wether" derives from Old English "weðer" (ram, male sheep), specifically meaning castrated male sheep raised for wool or meat rather than breeding. Pastoral and agricultural poetry employed it when precise sheep terminology mattered for authentic rural description. The word distinguished wethers from rams (breeding males) and ewes (females), allowing accurate depiction of flock composition and agricultural practice. Poets depicting rural life, shepherding, or agricultural economy used such specific vocabulary for authentic atmosphere and technical accuracy. The term appears in contexts where sheep husbandry's practical details supported themes of pastoral life, agricultural knowledge, or rural economy. Its specificity enriched literary language by acknowledging that agricultural communities distinguished animals precisely according to sex, reproductive status, and purpose. The word exemplifies how technical agricultural vocabulary provided poets with precise terminology that grounded pastoral idealization in practical realities of actual farming and animal husbandry.
Example
Example in poetry:
A castrated ram, used in pastoral and agricultural poetry; The shepherd counted his wethers in the fold; Hardy's Wessex poems mention wethers grazing on the downs; Biblical language distinguishes rams from wethers in sacrifice; The wethers' wool was prized for its fine quality; Wordsworth includes wethers in his Lake District pastoral scenes
Additional Notes
A “wether” is a castrated male sheep, a common agricultural term in pastoral poetry. It distinguishes non-breeding livestock from rams or ewes and often appears in bucolic scenes to emphasise rural realism. Recognising such terms helps decode the authentic imagery of agrarian life in older poetry.
Also Known As
ram male sheep wether sheep
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