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.

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

Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne
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 59% Poems 83% Blended 70%
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…

“I am ignorant of absolute truth. But I am humble before my ignorance and therein lies my honor and my reward.”

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

Algernon Charles Swinburne

5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909 (~72)
14 live poems · English

Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on 5 April 1837 at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, into a family whose rank, traditions, and geography would all enter his imagination. He was the eldest surviving child of Captain, later Admiral, Charles Henry Swinburne and Lady Jane Henrietta Ashburnham, daughter of the third Earl of Ashburnham. His inheritance was aristocratic, military, and literary. The Swinburnes p…

“A child with any ear or eye for the attraction of verse or art can dispense with analysis and rest content to apprehend it without comprehension; it were to be wished that adults equally incapable would rest equally content.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Dramatic Poets, Political Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Kahlil Gibran
Algernon Charles Swinburne
1837 1931
They overlapped for 27 years (1883–1909). When Kahlil Gibran was born, Algernon Charles Swinburne was about 46. Kahlil Gibran was about 26 when Algernon Charles Swinburne died.

On the map

About 3,462 km separate Bsharri, Lebanon from Grosvenor Place, London, 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 freedom

Kahlil Gibran: bsharri, lebanon, new york city, the prophet, arab émigré literary movement, kamila rahmeh, khalil sa‘d gibran, mary elizabeth haskell. Algernon Charles Swinburne: london, isle of wight, northumberland, captain charles henry swinburne, lady jane henrietta ashburnham, atalanta in calydon, poems and ballads, percy bysshe shelley.

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
75% heart
Compare
In Time of Mourning
Algernon Charles Swinburne
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
74%
Compare
The Sundew
Algernon Charles Swinburne
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
74%
Compare
A Leave-Taking
Algernon Charles Swinburne
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
73%
Compare
In Time of Mourning
Algernon Charles Swinburne
A Tear and a Smile
Kahlil Gibran
73% sorrow
Compare
Love laid his sleepless head
Algernon Charles Swinburne
On Talking
Kahlil Gibran
73%
Compare
A Leave-Taking
Algernon Charles Swinburne

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Kahlil Gibran: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder. Algernon Charles Swinburne: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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