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

Samuel Rogers Samuel Rogers

Poet B

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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 76% Poems 84% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Samuel Rogers

Samuel Rogers

30 July 1763 – 18 December 1855 (~92)
2 live poems · English

Samuel Rogers was born on 30 July 1763 at Newington Green, then a village on the northern edge of London and now part of the capital’s urban fabric. He died on 18 December 1855, aged ninety-two, having outlived nearly every major writer of the generation with which he was associated. His long life stretched from the late age of Samuel Johnson to the early reign of Queen Victoria; he knew the world before the French R…

“The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who reads too.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Joy, Peace
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834 (~62)
26 live poems · English

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in Ottery St Mary, Devon, and died on 25 July 1834 at Highgate, near London. He occupies an unusual and commanding place in English literary history: he was at once one of the makers of Romantic poetry, a revolutionary critic of Shakespeare and poetic language, a philosophical mediator between German idealism and English thought, a political journalist, a religious…

“prose = words in their best order; poetry = the best words in the best order”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing

In time

Samuel Rogers
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1763 1855
They overlapped for 63 years (1772–1834). When Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born, Samuel Rogers was about 9. Samuel Rogers was about 71 when Samuel Taylor Coleridge died.

On the map

About 241 km separate Deptford, London, England from Ottery St. Mary, Devon, England. Both have ground in London.

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

romantic helped

Samuel Rogers: newington green, the pleasures of memory, an ode to superstition, thomas gray, william collins, oliver goldsmith, victorian novel, dissenting community. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: ottery st mary, highgate, the rime of the ancient mariner, kubla khan, christabel, biographia literaria, william wordsworth, charles lamb.

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.

To the Butterfly
Samuel Rogers
81% butterfly, life
Compare
Psyche
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To the Butterfly
Samuel Rogers
76% light
Compare
A sunny shaft did I behold
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To the Butterfly
Samuel Rogers
75%
Compare
To Nature
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To the Butterfly
Samuel Rogers
75%
Compare
Seaward, white gleaming thro’ the busy scud
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To the Butterfly
Samuel Rogers
74% life
Compare
Human Life
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To the Butterfly
Samuel Rogers
74% light
Compare
To the Autumnal Moon
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Samuel Rogers: Spirituality, Joy, Peace. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

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