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

Arthur Macy Arthur Macy

Poet B

Kahlil Gibran Kahlil Gibran
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 55% Poems 79% Blended 66%
Swap sides Another related pair
Arthur Macy

Arthur Macy

6 June 1842 – 1 June 1904 (~62)
4 live poems · English

Arthur Macy (June 6, 1842 – June 1, 1904) emerged as a distinctive voice in 19th-century American poetry, blending Quaker sensibility with a soldier’s grit and a businessman’s pragmatism. Born on Nantucket Island to Oliver C. Macy and Phebe Fowler Macy, descendants of Thomas Macy—the Quaker leader who famously purchased Nantucket from Indigenous tribes—Arthur’s early life was steeped in New England’s maritime culture…

“Don't talk baseball to him. He don't care anything about it, he don't know anything about it, and he don't want to.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Peace, Irony
Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran

6 January 1883 – 10 April 1931 (~48)
5 live poems · English

Kahlil Gibran, born on 6 January 1883 in the mountain town of Bsharri, in what is now northern Lebanon, and dead on 10 April 1931 in New York City, became one of the most widely read literary figures of the twentieth century. He was a poet, prose writer, essayist, painter, draftsman, cultural critic, and immigrant intellectual whose work traveled between Arabic and English, Lebanon and the United States, Christianity…

“You have the great gift of understanding, beloved Mary. You are a life-giver. You are like the Great Spirit, who befriends man not only to share his life, but to add to it.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Arabic Poets, Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Persian Mystic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder

In time

Arthur Macy
Kahlil Gibran
1842 1931
They overlapped for 22 years (1883–1904). When Kahlil Gibran was born, Arthur Macy was about 41. Kahlil Gibran was about 21 when Arthur Macy died.

On the map

About 8,723 km separate Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, USA from Bsharri, Lebanon. Shared ground: United States.

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

boston

Arthur Macy: nantucket island, detroit, civil war, 24th michigan infantry, gettysburg, mary t. winchell, poems, the rollicking mastodon. Kahlil Gibran: bsharri, lebanon, new york city, the prophet, arab émigré literary movement, kamila rahmeh, khalil sa‘d gibran, mary elizabeth haskell.

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.

The Indifferent Mariner
Arthur Macy
69% life
Compare
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
The Indifferent Mariner
Arthur Macy
69%
Compare
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
A Valentine
Arthur Macy
67%
Compare
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
A Valentine
Arthur Macy
67% life
Compare
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
The Indifferent Mariner
Arthur Macy
66% self
Compare
On Talking
Kahlil Gibran
The Hatband
Arthur Macy
66%
Compare
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Arthur Macy: Joy, Peace, Irony. Kahlil Gibran: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder.

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