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

Gerald Massey Gerald Massey

Poet B

Robert Southey Robert Southey
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 73% Poems 82% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Gerald Massey

Gerald Massey

29 May 1828 – 29 October 1907 (~79)
3 live poems · English

Gerald Massey, born on 29 May 1828 in Tring, Hertfordshire, and dead on 29 October 1907 in South Norwood, London, lived one of the most striking self-made literary lives of the Victorian age. He was a poet, lecturer, editor, radical reformer, Shakespearean commentator, spiritual seeker, and amateur investigator of comparative religion. In each of these roles he carried the imprint of his beginnings: he had known chil…

“There are conditions in which many of the poor exist, where humanity must be either rebel or slave. For the slave, degradation and moral death are certain; but for the rebel there is always a chance of becoming conqueror.”

Neighbourhood: Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Anger, Despair
Robert Southey

Robert Southey

12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843 (~69)
4 live poems · English

Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…

“It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions; they have their place in heaven also.”

Neighbourhood: Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder

In time

Gerald Massey
Robert Southey
1774 1907
They overlapped for 16 years (1828–1843). When Gerald Massey was born, Robert Southey was about 54. Gerald Massey was about 15 when Robert Southey died.

On the map

About 139 km separate Tring, Hertfordshire, England from Bristol, 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

religious social

Gerald Massey: tring, south norwood, william massey, rosina jane cross, babe christabel, poems and chansons, voices of freedom, lyrics of love. Robert Southey: bristol, greta hall, lake district, pantisocracy, edward fricker, samuel taylor coleridge, joan of arc, thalaba the destroyer.

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.

Song of the Red Republican
Gerald Massey
73%
Compare
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
Dirge
Gerald Massey
73%
Compare
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
Dirge
Gerald Massey
72%
Compare
My days among the Dead are past
Robert Southey
The Lords of Land and Money
Gerald Massey
71% social
Compare
The Complaints of the Poor
Robert Southey

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Gerald Massey: Longing, Anger, Despair. Robert Southey: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder.

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