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

Lady Nairne Lady Nairne

Poet B

Lady Anne Lindsay Lady Anne Lindsay
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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 80% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Lady Nairne

Lady Nairne

16 August 1766 – 26 October 1845 (~79)
3 live poems · English

Carolina Oliphant, later Lady Nairne, was born on 16 August 1766 at Gask House in Perthshire, into a family whose private memories were inseparable from one of Scotland’s most public historical wounds. She died on 26 October 1845, also at Gask, after a life of seventy-nine years in which she became one of the most accomplished and widely loved writers of Scottish song. For much of that life, however, the public did n…

“There is so much high talent, truth, and simplicity, that when I put it all together, it left the impression of sublimity on my mind.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Political Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Lady Anne Lindsay

Lady Anne Lindsay

8 December 1750 – 6 May 1825 (~75)
1 live poem · English

Lady Anne Lindsay, later Lady Anne Barnard, was born on 8 December 1750 at Balcarres in Fife, Scotland, and died on 6 May 1825 in London. She is remembered above all as the author of “Auld Robin Gray,” one of the most affecting and durable songs in the Scottish literary tradition. Yet the ballad’s extraordinary afterlife has sometimes reduced its maker to a name attached to a single lyric. Her life was considerably l…

“The only proof of madness that the John Bulls find in me is my being contented with every thing as I find it.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing

In time

Lady Nairne
Lady Anne Lindsay
1750 1845
They overlapped for 60 years (1766–1825). When Lady Nairne was born, Lady Anne Lindsay was about 16. Lady Nairne was about 59 when Lady Anne Lindsay died.

On the map

About 42 km separate Gask House, Perthshire, Scotland from Balcarres, Fife, Scotland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

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

scottish social

Lady Nairne: gask house, perthshire, jacobite songs, the land o' the leal, will ye no come back again?, robert burns, major william murray nairne, mrs bogan of bogan. Lady Anne Lindsay: balcarres, cape colony, auld robin gray, james lindsay, andrew barnard, scottish ballad tradition, edinburgh, colonial official.

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.

The Land o' the Leal
Lady Nairne
77% love
Compare
Auld Robin Gray
Lady Anne Lindsay
Would you be young again?
Lady Nairne
76%
Compare
Auld Robin Gray
Lady Anne Lindsay
Caller Herrin'
Lady Nairne
75%
Compare
Auld Robin Gray
Lady Anne Lindsay

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Lady Nairne: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. Lady Anne Lindsay: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.

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