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

Charlotte Smith Charlotte Smith

Poet B

Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë
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 78% Poems 90% Blended 83%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charlotte Smith

Charlotte Smith

4 May 1749 – 28 October 1806 (~57)
7 live poems · English

Charlotte Smith was born Charlotte Turner in London on 4 May 1749 and died at Tilford, near Farnham in Surrey, on 28 October 1806. During her lifetime she was known not only as a poet but as one of the most productive and commercially important writers in Britain. She published poetry, novels, children’s books, translations, and educational works while sustaining a large family and enduring a marriage, a debt crisis,…

“The indulgence with which the public has received these poems has encouraged the author to offer them again.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë

21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855 (~39)
7 live poems · English

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816 at Thornton, near Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the third surviving child of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë. She died on 31 March 1855, not yet thirty-nine years old, after creating a body of work that transformed the English novel. Though chiefly celebrated as a novelist, she began as a poet, wrote poetry throughout her life, and brought a poet’s inten…

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder

In time

Charlotte Smith
Charlotte Brontë
1749 1855
Their lives did not overlap. 10 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 297 km separate Stoke next Guildford, Surrey, England from Thornton, Yorkshire, England. 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

fiction

Charlotte Smith: london, elegiac sonnets, the old manor house, the emigrants, nicholas turner, benjamin smith, french revolution, georgian england. Charlotte Brontë: thornton, bradford, jane eyre, villette, patrick brontë, maria branwell brontë, angrian chronicles, gondal.

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.

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes
Charlotte Smith
81% hope, suffering
Compare
Life
Charlotte Brontë
To the Muse
Charlotte Smith
80%
Compare
Parting
Charlotte Brontë
To the Muse
Charlotte Smith
79% suffering, sorrow
Compare
Life
Charlotte Brontë
The Dead Beggar
Charlotte Smith
78%
Compare
Parting
Charlotte Brontë
Go! cruel tyrant of the human breast
Charlotte Smith
77% self
Compare
When Thou Sleepest
Charlotte Brontë
To a Nightingale
Charlotte Smith
77%
Compare
When Thou Sleepest
Charlotte Brontë

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

Charlotte Smith: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Charlotte Brontë: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder.

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