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



Compare Poets

Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.

Poet A

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Poet B

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri
Compare two related contemporaries

A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.

Somewhat related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 54% Blended 54%
Swap sides Another related pair
Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī

30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273 (~66)
2 live poems · Persian

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī, known in much of the world as Rumi, was born on 30 September 1207 and died on 17 December 1273. Few poets have crossed linguistic, religious, and national boundaries as fully as he has. In Persian literary history he is often called Mawlānā, “our master,” and in the Turkish-speaking world he is remembered as Mevlânâ; “Rumi,” the name by which he is most familiar in English, means…

“These words are for those who need words in order to understand. For those who understand without words, what use is speech?”

Neighbourhood: Medieval Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Persian Mystic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness
Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri

c. May 1265 – 14 September 1321 (~56)
1 live poem · Italian

In the spring of 1265, beneath the shadow of Florence's rising towers, a child was born who would revolutionize not merely Italian literature but the entire Western imagination. Dante Alighieri entered a world of political turmoil, theological ferment, and artistic flowering, and he would spend his fifty-six years transforming personal anguish into universal art, political exile into cosmic vision, and earthly love i…

“I intend to say of her what has never been said of any woman.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Italian Renaissance Poets, Medieval Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Tenderness, Longing

In time

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī
Dante Alighieri
1207 1321
They overlapped for 9 years (1265–1273). When Dante Alighieri was born, Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī was about 58. Dante Alighieri was about 8 when Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī died.

On the map

About 4,695 km separate Balkh, Afghanistan from Florence, Italy. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

Shared

From the biographies

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī: balkh, khorasan, shams-i tabrizi, divan-i shams-i tabrizi, masnavi, seljuk sultanate of rūm, gawhar khātūn, sulṭān walad. Dante Alighieri: florence, divine comedy, beatrice portinari, vita nuova, guido cavalcanti, black guelphs, white guelphs, de monarchia.

Poems that secretly rhyme

The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.

O friend, accept me and take my life
Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī
68% love, spiritual
Compare
Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare
Dante Alighieri
Come, Come, Whoever You Are
Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī
67% divine, spiritual, love
Compare
Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare
Dante Alighieri

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness. Dante Alighieri: Wonder, Tenderness, Longing.

Skip to main content