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

Philip Arthur Larkin Philip Arthur Larkin

Poet B

Laurence Binyon Laurence Binyon
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 73% Poems 85% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Philip Arthur Larkin

Philip Arthur Larkin

9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985 (~63)
11 live poems · English

Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-1985) stands as one of the most significant English poets of the post-war era, a writer whose unflinching observations of ordinary life and masterful technical skill earned him a place among the finest poets of the 20th century. Often labeled as the "saddest heart in the post-war supermarket," Larkin crafted verse that captured the disillusionment and quiet desperation of modern Britain wit…

“The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”

Neighbourhood: Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
Listen Timeline Affinities
Laurence Binyon

Laurence Binyon

10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943 (~74)
3 live poems · English

Laurence Binyon was born in Lancaster, England, on 10 August 1869, and died in Reading on 10 March 1943. During his lifetime he occupied an unusual and influential place in British cultural life: he was a poet, dramatist, translator, art historian, museum curator, critic, and lecturer. Yet public memory has narrowed him, often understandably, to the author of “For the Fallen,” the 1914 poem whose most famous stanza h…

“In every art the material taken up, just in so far as the artist is successful, is merged into idea.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Philip Arthur Larkin
Laurence Binyon
1869 1985
They overlapped for 22 years (1922–1943). When Philip Arthur Larkin was born, Laurence Binyon was about 53. Philip Arthur Larkin was about 21 when Laurence Binyon died.
Philip Arthur Larkin in history Laurence Binyon in history Years they were given

On the map

About 199 km separate Radford, Coventry, England from Lancaster, England. Both have ground in England.

Philip Arthur Larkin

Laurence Binyon

Open both on the History Atlas

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

life world

Philip Arthur Larkin only

social self desire love family relationship relationships harm pastoral nature society clay

Laurence Binyon only

dead fallen death grief soldiers memory house cedar landscape garden domestic flowers

From the biographies

Philip Arthur Larkin: coventry, university librarian, st. john's college, kingsley amis, the less deceived, the whitsun weddings, church going, toads. Laurence Binyon: lancaster, for the fallen, cicely margaret powell, the times, british museum, trinity college, painting in the far east, the flight of the dragon.

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 a Very Slow Air
Philip Arthur Larkin
75% world, life
Compare
O Summer sun
Laurence Binyon
Latest Face
Philip Arthur Larkin
74%
Compare
O Summer sun
Laurence Binyon
Long Last
Philip Arthur Larkin
73% death
Compare
For the Fallen
Laurence Binyon
Who called love conquering
Philip Arthur Larkin
72%
Compare
O Summer sun
Laurence Binyon
Long Last
Philip Arthur Larkin
72%
Compare
The House That Was
Laurence Binyon
Who called love conquering
Philip Arthur Larkin
72%
Compare
The House That Was
Laurence Binyon

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1922 Publication of 'The Waste Land'
1924 Frost's First Pulitzer Prize
1925 Death of Amy Lowell
1926 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize
1926 Publication of 'Winnie-the-Pooh'
1928 Alexander Fleming Discovers Penicillin
1928 Lawrence publishes Lady Chatterley's Lover
1929 Great Depression Begins

Philip Arthur Larkin

1940 Larkin's Education at St John's College, Oxford
1943 First Published Poem in 'The Oxford Magazine'
1945 Larkin's First Collection 'The North Ship' Published
1955 Appointment as Librarian at the University of Hull
1955 Publication of 'The Less Deceived'
1964 Publication of 'The Whitsun Weddings'
1974 Publication of 'High Windows'
1983 Honorary Doctorate from the University of Hull

Laurence Binyon

1887 Scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford
1893 Employment at the British Museum
1894 Publication of 'Lyric Poems'
1911 Publication of 'The Flight of the Dragon'
1914 Volunteering for hospital service during WWI
1914 Writing of 'For the Fallen'
1916 Publication of 'The Great War and the British Empire'
1943 Publication of 'The Collected Poems of Laurence Binyon'

Emotional landscapes

Philip Arthur Larkin: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. Laurence Binyon: Wonder, Longing, Peace.

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