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

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Poet B

Robert Browning Robert Browning
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 70% Poems 92% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

17 August 1840 – 10 September 1922 (~82)
9 live poems · English

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, born on 17 August 1840 at Petworth in Sussex and dead on 10 September 1922 at Newbuildings Place, his Sussex home, lived a life unusually crowded with contradiction. He was an English gentleman who became one of Victorian Britain’s most persistent critics of empire; a formal, often old-fashioned poet who sought to make verse answer political injustice; a diplomat who abandoned official service i…

“I am not a disciple of Tolstoy. He believes in the possibility of improvement, in moral progress, and in a far away Christian civilization. I do not.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Robert Browning

Robert Browning

7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889 (~77)
19 live poems · English

Robert Browning was born on 7 May 1812 at Southampton Cottage, Camberwell, then a semi-rural district south of London, and died on 12 December 1889 in Venice. Few English poets have combined such audacity of intellect, dramatic energy, moral curiosity, and technical resourcefulness. During his lifetime he moved from the position of a puzzling, frequently mocked young writer to that of a revered elder of Victorian let…

“I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett—and I love you too.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder

In time

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Robert Browning
1812 1922
They overlapped for 50 years (1840–1889). When Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was born, Robert Browning was about 28. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was about 49 when Robert Browning died.

On the map

About 65 km separate Petworth House, Sussex, England from Camberwell, London, 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

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: petworth, newbuildings place, lady anne blunt, the bedouin tribes of the euphrates, a pilgrimage to nejd, crabbet park, arabian horse breeding, stonyhurst college. Robert Browning: southampton cottage, venice, dramatic monologue, elizabeth barrett browning, pauline: a fragment of a confession, my last duchess, porphyria's lover, pippa passes.

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 fly not, Pleasure
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
83% love
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
He Laments that His Love is Dead
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
83% love
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
Brave as a falcon and as merciless
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
82% love, hand
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
Brave as a falcon and as merciless
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
81% love, bird
Compare
Misconceptions
Robert Browning
On Her Vanity
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
80% woman, love
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
He Has Fallen from the Height of His Love
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
80% love, woman
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Robert Browning: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder.

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