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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we 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

0.008 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.

The Rosebud

by William Broome

0.0382 + 0.2485i

Drawing the boundary…

Valiant Love

by Richard Lovelace

0.0445 + 0.2539i

Drawing the boundary…

The poems

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

The Rosebud

by William Broome

Queen of fragrance, lovely Rose,
The beauties of thy leaves disclose!
—But thou, fair Nymph, thyself survey
In this sweet offspring of a day.
That miracle of face must fail,
Thy charms are sweet, but charms are frail:
Swift as the short-lived flower they fly,
At morn they bloom, at evening die:
Though Sickness yet a while forbears,
Yet Time destroys what Sickness spares:
Now Helen lives alone in fame,
And Cleopatra's but a name:
Time must indent that heavenly brow,
And thou must be what they are now.

Valiant Love

by Richard Lovelace

Now fie upon that everlasting life! I die!
She hates! Ah me! It makes me mad;
As if love fired his torch at a moist eye,
Or with his joys e’er crowned the sad.
Oh, let me live and shout, when I fall on;
Let me e’en triumph in the first attempt!
Love’s duellist from conquest’s not exempt,
When his fair murderess shall not gain one groan,
And he expire e’en in ovation.

Let me make my approach, when I lie down
With counter-wrought and traversed eyes;
With peals of confidence batter the town;
Had ever beggar yet the keys?
No, I will vary storms with sun and wind;
Be rough, and offer calm condition;
March in and plead, or starve the garrison.
Let her make sallies hourly: yet I’ll find
(Though all beat off) she’s to be undermined.

Then may it please your little excellence
Of hearts to ordain, by sound of lips,
That henceforth none in tears dare love commence
(Her thoughts i’th’ full, his, in th’ eclipse);
On pain of having’s lance broke on her bed,
That he be branded all free beauties’ slave,
And his own hollow eyes be doomed his grave:
Since in your host that coward ne’er was fed,
Who to his prostrate e’er was prostrated.

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