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

Ada Cambridge Ada Cambridge

Poet B

John McCrae John McCrae
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.

Somewhat related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 53% Blended 53%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ada Cambridge

Ada Cambridge

21 November 1844 – 19 July 1926 (~82)
6 live poems · English

Ada Cambridge, who would become one of colonial Australia's most prolific and quietly subversive literary voices, was born on 21 November 1844 at St Germans, Norfolk, England. She was the second child of Thomasine and Henry Cambridge, a gentleman farmer of comfortable means. The Norfolk countryside, with its flat, expansive skies and ancient, weathered churches, would seep into her imagination and later resurface in…

“For more than thirty years we have not met, and there have been long gaps in our correspondence; but friendship has survived all, unchanged.”

Neighbourhood: Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
John McCrae

John McCrae

30 November 1872 – 28 January 1918 (~46)
1 live poem · English

John McCrae was born on 30 November 1872 in Guelph, Ontario, then a prosperous and growing town in Canada’s province of Ontario. He died on 28 January 1918 at Wimereux, France, before the war that made his name famous had ended. In the short span between those dates, he became several things at once: physician, medical teacher, pathologist, soldier, officer, friend, and poet. To later generations he is overwhelmingly…

“I am really rather afraid, but more afraid to stay at home with my conscience.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

Ada Cambridge
John McCrae
1844 1926
They overlapped for 47 years (1872–1918). When John McCrae was born, Ada Cambridge was about 28. Ada Cambridge was about 74 when John McCrae died.

On the map

About 5,750 km separate St Germans, Norfolk, England from Guelph, Ontario, Canada. 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

Ada Cambridge: st germans, norfolk, george frederick cross, the retrospect, hymns on the litany, hymns on the holy communion, up the murray, a marked man. John McCrae: guelph, ontario, in flanders fields, second boer war, canadian field artillery, alexis helmer, victorian ideals, royal victoria hospital.

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.

Craven-Heart
Ada Cambridge
74% world, life
Compare
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
Despair
Ada Cambridge
73% life
Compare
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
Faith
Ada Cambridge
69% life
Compare
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
After Our Likeness
Ada Cambridge
68% life, death
Compare
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
Outcast
Ada Cambridge
62% life
Compare
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
Desire
Ada Cambridge
62%
Compare
In Flanders Fields
John McCrae

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ada Cambridge: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. John McCrae: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

Skip to main content