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

Manmohan Ghose Manmohan Ghose

Poet B

Max Ehrmann Max Ehrmann
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 61% Poems 79% Blended 69%
Swap sides Another related pair
Manmohan Ghose

Manmohan Ghose

19 January 1869 – 4 January 1924 (~55)
2 live poems · English

In the annals of Indian literature, few figures occupy a position as quietly significant yet fundamentally pioneering as Manmohan Ghose (19 January 1869 – 4 January 1924), one of the earliest Indian poets to write substantially in English. Born in Bhagalpur in Bengal, Ghose's life represents a fascinating narrative of cultural displacement, artistic achievement, and personal tragedy. He stands as a bridge between two…

“You cannot think how much I value your simple and sincere words of praise.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann

26 September 1872 – 9 September 1945 (~73)
2 live poems · English

Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…

“I am not making a book that will live or a book that will die. I have no thought whether it will live or die. I am for my own sake manifesting myself, looking at myself, encouraging and criticising myself.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace

In time

Manmohan Ghose
Max Ehrmann
1869 1945
They overlapped for 53 years (1872–1924). When Max Ehrmann was born, Manmohan Ghose was about 3. Max Ehrmann was about 52 when Manmohan Ghose died.

On the map

About 12,676 km separate Bhagalpur, Bengal, India from Terre Haute, Indiana, USA. 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

Manmohan Ghose: bhagalpur, sri aurobindo, primavera: poems by four authors, the blindness of love, laurence binyon, oxford, presidency college, malati banerjee. Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius.

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.

A Lament
Manmohan Ghose
72% world
Compare
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
Heap ruby upon amethyst,
Manmohan Ghose
71% love
Compare
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
Heap ruby upon amethyst,
Manmohan Ghose
66%
Compare
Desiderata
Max Ehrmann
A Lament
Manmohan Ghose
65% nature
Compare
Desiderata
Max Ehrmann

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Manmohan Ghose: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder. Max Ehrmann: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace.

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