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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poet B

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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 84% Poems 90% Blended 87%
Swap sides Another related pair
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822 (~30)
13 live poems · English

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, the Shelley family home near Horsham in Sussex, and died on 8 July 1822, drowned in the Gulf of Spezia off the Italian coast before he had reached his thirtieth birthday. The extraordinary compression of his life has encouraged a legend of Shelley as the beautiful, doomed Romantic rebel: an ethereal poet, political prophet, atheist, lover, exile, and vict…

“The most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851 (~54)
2 live poems · English

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on 30 August 1797 and dead on 1 February 1851, occupied an extraordinary position in British literary history from the beginning of her life. She was the daughter of two of the most provocative writers of the late eighteenth century: the political philosopher William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her name ha…

“They were the eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune with the creatures of my fancy.”

Neighbourhood: Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
1792 1851
They overlapped for 26 years (1797–1822). When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born, Percy Bysshe Shelley was about 5. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was about 25 when Percy Bysshe Shelley died.
Percy Bysshe Shelley in history Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in history Years they were given

On the map

About 53 km separate Field Place, Horsham, Sussex, England from Somers Town, London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Open both on the History Atlas

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

love memory life desire beloved grief

Percy Bysshe Shelley only

romantic nature world beauty leaves power self death ozymandias statue

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley only

dream psyche dreams star light

From the biographies

frankenstein romanticism lake geneva power social

Percy Bysshe Shelley: field place, gulf of spezia, sussex, thomas jefferson hogg, harriet westbrook, mary godwin, queen mab, the necessity of atheism. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: frankenstein, villa diodati, percy bysshe shelley, william godwin, history of a six weeks' tour, romanticism, gothic fiction, lake geneva.

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.

O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
85% love
Compare
Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
To Night
Percy Bysshe Shelley
85% desire
Compare
Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
84%
Compare
How like a star
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Love's Philosophy
Percy Bysshe Shelley
83% love, beloved, desire
Compare
Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Music when Soft Voices Die
Percy Bysshe Shelley
83% love
Compare
Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Music when Soft Voices Die
Percy Bysshe Shelley
82% memory
Compare
How like a star
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1798 Coleridge Writes The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Featuring Becalmed Winds
1798 First Publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798)
1799 Volta invents the voltaic pile, the first battery
1803 Napoleonic Wars Begin
1803 The Louisiana Purchase
1805 HMS Victory Leads Britain at Trafalgar
1812 French Invasion of Russia Begins
1812 The Harrowing Retreat from Moscow

Percy Bysshe Shelley

1811 Marriage to Harriet Westbrook
1811 Shelley Expelled from Oxford
1813 Publication of 'Queen Mab'
1818 Publication of 'The Revolt of Islam'
1818 Shelley Moves to Italy
1819 Publication of 'Ode to the West Wind'
1819 Publication of 'The Cenci'
1820 Publication of 'Prometheus Unbound'

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

1805 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Education Begins
1815 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's First Child
1816 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Friendship with Lord Byron
1817 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Second Child
1823 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Return to England
1826 Publication of The Last Man
1831 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Literary Recognition
1849 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Final Years

Emotional landscapes

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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