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

Charles Sorley Charles Sorley

Poet B

Daniel Webster Davis Daniel Webster Davis
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 55% Poems 82% Blended 67%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charles Sorley

Charles Sorley

19 May 1895 – 13 October 1915 (~20)
8 live poems · English

Charles Hamilton Sorley was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 19 May 1895, and was killed in France on 13 October 1915, not yet twenty-one years old. His literary life lasted only a few years, and his published body of verse was small, much of it assembled after his death. Yet he occupies a singular place among the poets of the First World War. Unlike writers whose work became famous through prolonged service, later dis…

“Mutual helplessness and lassitude, as when two boxers who have battered each other crouch dancing two paces from each other, waiting for the other to hit. This is not Hell as I hoped, but Limbo Lake with green growths on the water, full of minnows.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Daniel Webster Davis

Daniel Webster Davis

25 March 1862 – 11 October 1913 (~51)
2 live poems · English

In the flickering twilight of America's greatest national trial, on March 25, 1862, Daniel Webster Davis entered the world in bondage. Born in either Caroline or Hanover County, Virginia, to enslaved parents—Randall or John Davis and Charlotte Ann Christian Davis—he drew his first breath amid the chaos of the Civil War, a conflict that would soon shatter the chains binding his family. His father died early, leaving h…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness

In time

Charles Sorley
Daniel Webster Davis
1862 1915
They overlapped for 19 years (1895–1913). When Charles Sorley was born, Daniel Webster Davis was about 33. Charles Sorley was about 18 when Daniel Webster Davis died.

On the map

About 5,696 km separate Aberdeen, Scotland from Caroline County, Virginia, USA. 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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

From the biographies

Charles Sorley: aberdeen, first world war, william ritchie sorley, robert graves, to germany, when you see millions of the mouthless dead, marlborough college, university college oxford. Daniel Webster Davis: caroline county virginia, richmond virginia, charlotte ann christian davis, emancipation, idle moments, weh down souf, garrison lyceum, virginia teachers' reading circle.

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.

East Kennet Church at Evening
Charles Sorley
79%
Compare
Good Night
Daniel Webster Davis
East Kennet Church at Evening
Charles Sorley
77% divine, light
Compare
Light in Darkness
Daniel Webster Davis
German Rain
Charles Sorley
73%
Compare
Light in Darkness
Daniel Webster Davis
If I have suffered pain
Charles Sorley
73%
Compare
Light in Darkness
Daniel Webster Davis
To Germany
Charles Sorley
72%
Compare
Light in Darkness
Daniel Webster Davis
Rooks
Charles Sorley
70%
Compare
Light in Darkness
Daniel Webster Davis

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Charles Sorley: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Daniel Webster Davis: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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