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

Arthur Symons Arthur Symons

Poet B

Antonio Machado Antonio Machado
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 60% Poems 82% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 – 22 January 1945 (~80)
23 live poems · English

Arthur Symons was born on 28 February 1865 at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, into a household shaped by religious discipline, frequent movement, and intellectual aspiration. He was the son of the Reverend Arthur Symons, a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and Mary Ann Symons. His father’s ministry required the family to move from place to place, and the boy’s childhood was therefore less rooted in one local communit…

“The poet is not a man who has something to say, but a man who has something to sing.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
Antonio Machado

Antonio Machado

26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939 (~64)
3 live poems · Spanish

In the pantheon of Spanish literature, few figures command the reverence and enduring relevance of Antonio Machado y Ruiz (1875-1939). A poet whose verses captured the essence of a nation's soul while simultaneously transcending national boundaries to speak to universal human experience, Machado stands as perhaps the most beloved voice of Spain's Generation of '98. His poetry, characterized by profound philosophical…

“Hay dos clases de hombres: los que viven hablando de las virtudes y los que se limitan a tenerlas.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness

In time

Arthur Symons
Antonio Machado
1865 1945
They overlapped for 65 years (1875–1939). When Antonio Machado was born, Arthur Symons was about 10. Arthur Symons was about 74 when Antonio Machado died.

On the map

About 1,594 km separate Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales from Seville, Spain. 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.

Shared

From the biographies

french

Arthur Symons: milford haven, wales, reverend arthur symons, days and nights, silhouettes, london literary life, rhymers' club, w. b. yeats. Antonio Machado: generation of '98, seville, soria, leonor izquierdo, soledades, orillas del duero, campos de castilla, proverbios y cantares.

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.

Her Street
Arthur Symons
77% love
Compare
Campo
Antonio Machado
Love in Dreams
Arthur Symons
75% love
Compare
Rosa de Fuego
Antonio Machado
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
75% love, life
Compare
Campo
Antonio Machado
Modern Beauty
Arthur Symons
75% beauty, desire, life
Compare
Rosa de Fuego
Antonio Machado
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
75% love, life, beauty
Compare
Rosa de Fuego
Antonio Machado
Quest
Arthur Symons
75% shadow, light
Compare
Campo
Antonio Machado

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Arthur Symons: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder. Antonio Machado: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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