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

whelm

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

To engulf, submerge, or overwhelm completely; to cover entirely with water or other substance; the root of "overwhelm."

Detailed Definition
"Whelm" derives from Middle English "whelmen" (to overturn, cover), meaning to engulf, submerge, or cover completely. The term functions as the root of "overwhelm," though "whelm" alone became less common. Poets employed it when depicting submersion, burial, or complete covering by water, earth, or metaphorical forces. Its use suggested total engulfment—to be whelmed was to be entirely covered or overcome. The word appears in contexts of shipwreck, flood, burial, or emotional inundation where complete submersion required expression. Its archaic quality distinguished it from "overwhelm," offering starker, simpler expression of engulfment. Poets valued its Anglo-Saxon directness for describing complete covering or defeat. The term efficiently conveys both action (the covering) and result (complete submersion), making it powerful for descriptions of catastrophic inundation, whether literal drowning or metaphorical defeat. Its monosyllabic force gave it impact appropriate to descriptions of sudden, complete disaster.
Example
Example in poetry:
To cover completely, overwhelm, or engulf; The waves whelmed the small boat, dragging it under; Milton uses whelm to describe chaos overwhelming order; Her grief whelmed her like a flood; The avalanche whelmed the village in snow and ice; Hopkins writes of being whelmed by God's grandeur
Additional Notes
“Whelm,” meaning to submerge or engulf, carries strong emotional and physical weight, surviving today in “overwhelm.” Poets use it to depict destruction, passion, or divine power. Understanding its original sense of total immersion clarifies metaphors of drowning, surrender, or awe in archaic verse.
Also Known As
overwhelm submerge engulf drown
Skip to main content