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

Banjo Paterson Banjo Paterson

Poet B

Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling
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 64% Poems 84% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
Banjo Paterson

Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941 (~77)
26 live poems · English

Andrew Barton Paterson, known to generations of readers as “Banjo” Paterson, was born on 17 February 1864 at Narrambla station, near Orange in New South Wales. He died in Sydney on 5 February 1941, twelve days short of his seventy-seventh birthday. Between those dates he became one of the most familiar literary voices in Australia: poet, journalist, solicitor, war correspondent, editor, soldier, horseman, storyteller…

“I don't know that I'm wholly satisfied with any of my work. I always think I can do better.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Irony
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936 (~71)
17 live poems · English

Rudyard Kipling was born Joseph Rudyard Kipling on December 30, 1865, in the bustling colonial port of Bombay, British India, a city that would forever pulse through his veins like the monsoon rains and the clamor of its streets. He died on January 18, 1936, in London, England, at the age of seventy, his body laid to rest in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey after a life that spanned the height of the British Empire…

“The word “inaccessible” as applied to any given spot on the surface of the globe will cease to have any meaning.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Longing

In time

Banjo Paterson
Rudyard Kipling
1864 1941
They overlapped for 72 years (1865–1936). When Rudyard Kipling was born, Banjo Paterson was about 1. Banjo Paterson was about 72 when Rudyard Kipling died.

On the map

Banjo Paterson

No mapped places yet.

Rudyard Kipling

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

Banjo Paterson: narrambla station, orange, new south wales, the man from snowy river, clancy of the overflow, waltzing matilda, the geebung polo club, the bush christening. Rudyard Kipling: bombay, westminster abbey, the jungle book, just so stories, kim, gunga din, the light that failed, caroline balestier.

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.

Jock
Banjo Paterson
83% imperial, soldier, empire
Compare
Troopin'
Rudyard Kipling
Jock
Banjo Paterson
79% empire
Compare
Fuzzy-Wuzzy
Rudyard Kipling
Jock
Banjo Paterson
79% empire
Compare
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling
Jock
Banjo Paterson
77% imperial, soldier, empire
Compare
The Jacket
Rudyard Kipling
Jock
Banjo Paterson
77% imperial, empire
Compare
Danny Deever
Rudyard Kipling
Jock
Banjo Paterson
76% imperial, empire
Compare
The Widow at Windsor
Rudyard Kipling

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Banjo Paterson: Wonder, Joy, Irony. Rudyard Kipling: Irony, Sorrow, Longing.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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