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

T. E. Brown T. E. Brown

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 62% Poems 84% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
T. E. Brown

T. E. Brown

5 May 1830 – 29 October 1897 (~67)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Victorian literature, Thomas Edward Brown occupies a unique position—a poet who straddled two worlds with remarkable grace and authenticity. Born on the Isle of Man in 1830 and dying there in 1897, Brown spent his life navigating between the intimate, Celtic traditions of his homeland and the broader currents of English literary culture. His poetry, written primarily in the Manx dialect, captured t…

“I am certain God made fools for us to enjoy, but there must be an economy of joy in the presence of a fool: you must not betray your enjoyment.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Scottish Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
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…

“All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.”

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

In time

T. E. Brown
Kahlil Gibran
1830 1931
They overlapped for 15 years (1883–1897). When Kahlil Gibran was born, T. E. Brown was about 53. Kahlil Gibran was about 14 when T. E. Brown died.
T. E. Brown in history Kahlil Gibran in history Years they were given

On the map

About 3,833 km separate Douglas, Isle of Man from Bsharri, Lebanon.

T. E. Brown

Kahlil Gibran

Open both on the History Atlas

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

life self

T. E. Brown only

divine return mother stream stillness leap hills embrace source dhoon nature motion

Kahlil Gibran only

spiritual existence longing tear smile duality sorrow journey soul cloud defeat growth

From the biographies

T. E. Brown: isle of man, manx dialect, robert brown, dorothy thompson brown, betsy lee, fo'c's'le yarns, the doctor and other poems, old john and other poems. 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.

Life
T. E. Brown
77%
Compare
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
Life
T. E. Brown
74% life
Compare
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
The Dhoon
T. E. Brown
74% nature
Compare
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
The Dhoon
T. E. Brown
73%
Compare
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
Life
T. E. Brown
73% self
Compare
On Talking
Kahlil Gibran
Life
T. E. Brown
72% life, self, divine
Compare
On Prayer
Kahlil Gibran

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom

T. E. Brown

1849 Education at St. John's College, Cambridge
1855 Ordination as a Methodist Minister
1865 Publication of 'The Manxman'
1875 Relocation to Liverpool for Teaching
1880 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of T. E. Brown'
1880 Return to the Isle of Man
1884 Publication of 'The Last of the Old School'
1897 Final Years and Legacy

Kahlil Gibran

1895 Emigration to the United States
1896 Mentorship by Fred Holland Day
1905 First Major Publication: 'Music'
1916 Founding of the Pen League
1920 Friendship with William Blake
1923 Publication of 'The Prophet'
1924 Death of Gibran's Mother
1926 Publication of 'Sand and Foam'

Emotional landscapes

T. E. Brown: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder. Kahlil Gibran: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder.

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