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

Kahlil Gibran Kahlil Gibran

Poet B

Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins
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 66% Poems 85% Blended 74%
Swap sides Another related pair
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…

“Keep me from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.”

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

Gerard Manley Hopkins

28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889 (~45)
17 live poems · English

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, in Stratford, Essex, which has since been absorbed into the bustling expanse of Greater London. He entered the world as the eldest of what would become nine children in a prosperous, artistic, and devout High Church Anglican family. His father, Manley Hopkins, was a successful marine insurance adjuster who also served as the Hawaiian consul-general in London and dabble…

“Nothing is so beautiful as spring.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing

In time

Kahlil Gibran
Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844 1931
They overlapped for 7 years (1883–1889). When Kahlil Gibran was born, Gerard Manley Hopkins was about 39. Kahlil Gibran was about 6 when Gerard Manley Hopkins died.

On the map

About 3,408 km separate Bsharri, Lebanon from Stratford, Essex, England. 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

music

Kahlil Gibran: bsharri, lebanon, new york city, the prophet, arab émigré literary movement, kamila rahmeh, khalil sa‘d gibran, mary elizabeth haskell. Gerard Manley Hopkins: stratford, essex, robert bridges, the wreck of the deutschland, sprung rhythm, oxford movement, john henry newman, society of jesus, terrible sonnets.

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.

Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
76% spiritual
Compare
In the Valley of the Elwy
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
76% spiritual
Compare
Where art thou friend
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
75% spiritual, heart
Compare
The Handsome Heart
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
75%
Compare
The Beginning of the End
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Song of Man
Kahlil Gibran
75% spiritual
Compare
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
Gerard Manley Hopkins
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
74%
Compare
The Beginning of the End
Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Kahlil Gibran: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.

Skip to main content