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

George Cabot Lodge George Cabot Lodge

Poet B

Rupert Brooke Rupert Brooke
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 68% Poems 86% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
George Cabot Lodge

George Cabot Lodge

10 October 1873 – 21 August 1909 (~36)
3 live poems · English

The story of George Cabot Lodge is a story of two shadows: one cast by the immense, looming silhouette of a politically titanic father, and the other, the long, penumbral shadow of a premature and tragic end. Within the brief span of thirty-six years, Lodge crafted a body of work that was unapologetically intellectual, earnestly philosophical, and deeply romantic, seeking nothing less than to articulate the soul’s st…

“Really, though, I hate cynicism; it is a compilation of cheap aphorisms that any fool can make.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke

3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915 (~28)
5 live poems · English

Rupert Chawner Brooke was born on 3 August 1887 at 5 Hillmorton Road, Rugby, Warwickshire, into a family for whom learning, public service, religion, and the traditions of English education were central facts of life. He died on 23 April 1915, aged only twenty-seven, on the Greek island of Skyros while serving with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. In the short interval between those dates, Brooke became…

“A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Spirituality

In time

George Cabot Lodge
Rupert Brooke
1873 1915
They overlapped for 23 years (1887–1909). When Rupert Brooke was born, George Cabot Lodge was about 14. Rupert Brooke was about 22 when George Cabot Lodge died.

On the map

About 5,161 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Rugby, Warwickshire, England. 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

poems

George Cabot Lodge: boston, nahant, william james, george santayana, the song of the wave, poems, the great adventure, cain. Rupert Brooke: rugby, warwickshire, skyros, first world war, georgian poets, the old vicarage, grantchester, edwardian innocence, noel olivier.

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 Final Word
George Cabot Lodge
80% love, desire
Compare
The Beginning
Rupert Brooke
To Silence
George Cabot Lodge
75% world
Compare
The Charm
Rupert Brooke
The Final Word
George Cabot Lodge
74%
Compare
The Dance
Rupert Brooke
Day and Dark
George Cabot Lodge
74% world, beauty
Compare
The Charm
Rupert Brooke
Day and Dark
George Cabot Lodge
73% world, beauty
Compare
The Beginning
Rupert Brooke
The Final Word
George Cabot Lodge
73%
Compare
The Charm
Rupert Brooke

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

George Cabot Lodge: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness. Rupert Brooke: Longing, Tenderness, Spirituality.

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