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

Robert Southey Robert Southey

Poet B

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson
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 71% Poems 86% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert Southey

Robert Southey

12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843 (~69)
4 live poems · English

Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…

“Write poetry for its own sake, not in a spirit of emulation, & not with a view to celebrity: the less you aim at that, the more likely you will be to deserve, & finally obtain it.”

Neighbourhood: Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder
Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894 (~44)
4 live poems · English

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, into a family whose public achievements seemed to prescribe his future long before he could choose one for himself. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a distinguished civil engineer and designer of lighthouses, heir to a formidable Scottish professional dynasty. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, came from another prominent family; her fat…

“Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Wonder

In time

Robert Southey
Robert Louis Stevenson
1774 1894
Their lives did not overlap. 7 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 502 km separate Bristol, England from Edinburgh, 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

Robert Southey: bristol, greta hall, lake district, pantisocracy, edward fricker, samuel taylor coleridge, joan of arc, thalaba the destroyer. Robert Louis Stevenson: edinburgh, thomas stevenson, fanny van de grift osbourne, strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde, treasure island, the sea cook, an inland voyage, travels with a donkey in the cévennes.

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.

My days among the Dead are past
Robert Southey
78%
Compare
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
76%
Compare
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
My days among the Dead are past
Robert Southey
71%
Compare
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
71%
Compare
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Complaints of the Poor
Robert Southey
69% social
Compare
The Vagabond
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
68%
Compare
Summer Sun
Robert Louis Stevenson

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

Robert Southey: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder. Robert Louis Stevenson: Peace, Joy, Wonder.

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