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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the 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.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard



Poem fractal

Side by side

Random

0.132 apart. A smaller distance means the lines are built more alike.

This number is read from the build of the lines. The bright edge is that number, carried outward until the pattern repeats.

My Garland

by Nora Hopper Chesson

−0.0322 + 1.7797i

Drawing the boundary…

To Thine Own Self Be True

by William Shakespeare

−0.0287 + 1.6478i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

Each poem scrolls on its own, so the two texts stay beside each other.

My Garland

by Nora Hopper Chesson

I make a garland here of water-flowers 
Gathered in quiet hours 
From banks that Liris hourly eats away: 
From fields that hear all day 
The plaint of Simois for boyhood dead. 
From almond-boughs o'erhead 
I pluck some mocking blossoms: and a spray 
Of euphrasy, 
That I may see on every leafless tree 
The promise of its later royalty 
Of mellow apples, or its summer dower 
Of scarlet thorn or purple Judas-flower. 
I make my garland here, and set between 
Pale poplar leaves and Pan's own parsley green 
From battle-fields where Nike has not been. 
I lift my finished wreath, but make my prayer 
Neither to Jove nor Venus: nor have care 
To plead to Juno, that my unbound hair 
The yellow veil may bear. 
But I make humble prayer 
To Pan, who gives the squirrel winter store, 
Who bids the reeds grow by the river-shore: 
That he will stand before 
My joy and grief, 
And that my withered leaf 
He gather up into his sunburned hand. 
For joy and grief and hope Pan also knew, 
And he hath care to-day for maid and man 
That Love has yet forborne to bless or ban: 
For once in fields that knew no mortal feet 
He harvested Love's wheat, in Love's own land. 
Therefore, my wreath that's pale and little sweet 
I cast before Pan's feet. 

To Thine Own Self Be True

by William Shakespeare

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

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