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

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Sassoon

Poet B

Wilfred Owen Wilfred Owen
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 81% Poems 93% Blended 86%
Swap sides Another related pair
Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon

8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967 (~81)
21 live poems · English

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 at Weirleigh, a house near the village of Matfield in Kent, and died on 1 September 1967 at Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, a week before his eighty-first birthday. He remains one of the defining literary witnesses of the First World War: a poet whose plain speech, anger, technical control, and mordant irony broke through the patriotic consolations of his age. Yet…

“I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be wrong and unjust.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, LGBTQ+ Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918 (~25)
20 live poems · English

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on 18 March 1893 at Plas Wilmot, a house near Oswestry in Shropshire, on the borderland between England and Wales. He was the eldest of four children of Thomas Owen and Susan Shaw Owen; his siblings were Mary, Harold, and Colin. The family’s circumstances were respectable but precarious. Thomas had once been employed as a railway stationmaster, and Susan came from a family with str…

“There is no danger down here, or if any, it will be well over before you read these lines.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony

In time

Siegfried Sassoon
Wilfred Owen
1886 1967
They overlapped for 26 years (1893–1918). When Wilfred Owen was born, Siegfried Sassoon was about 7. Siegfried Sassoon was about 32 when Wilfred Owen died.

On the map

About 302 km separate Matfield, Kent, England from Oswestry, Shropshire, England. Both have ground in England.

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

first world war officer soldiers

Siegfried Sassoon: matfield, heytesbury house, first world war, robert graves, the daffodil murderer, the old huntsman, counter-attack and other poems, military cross. Wilfred Owen: oswestry, shropshire, siegfried sassoon, dulce et decorum est, anthem for doomed youth, futility, strange meeting, disabled.

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.

Batallion Relief
Siegfried Sassoon
87% world, soldiers, military
Compare
Spring Offensive
Wilfred Owen
Died of Wounds
Siegfried Sassoon
87% soldier, death
Compare
The Dead-Beat
Wilfred Owen
Died of Wounds
Siegfried Sassoon
87% soldier, death
Compare
Conscious
Wilfred Owen
The One-Legged Man
Siegfried Sassoon
87% life, soldier
Compare
Disabled
Wilfred Owen
Trench Duty
Siegfried Sassoon
86%
Compare
The Sentry
Wilfred Owen
Batallion Relief
Siegfried Sassoon
86%
Compare
The Sentry
Wilfred Owen

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Siegfried Sassoon: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. Wilfred Owen: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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