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

George Orwell George Orwell

Poet B

George Santayana George Santayana
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 65% Blended 65%
Swap sides Another related pair
George Orwell

George Orwell

25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950 (~47)
1 live poem · English

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903, in the small town of Motihari in the Bengal Presidency of British India, emerged as one of the twentieth century’s most piercing literary voices. Though often remembered first as a novelist and essayist whose works dissected totalitarianism, social injustice, and the hypocrisies of power, Orwell began his writing life with poetry. Those early verses, lyrical yet…

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Neighbourhood: Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
George Santayana

George Santayana

16 December 1863 – 26 September 1952 (~89)
1 live poem · English

George Santayana, born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás on 16 December 1863 in Madrid and dead in Rome on 26 September 1952, was one of the most elegant and elusive figures in American intellectual life. He was a philosopher, literary critic, poet, novelist, memoirist, teacher, and aphorist; yet no single profession completely contains him. Although he spent his formative adult years at Harvard and wr…

“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, German Romantics, LGBTQ+ Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

George Orwell
George Santayana
1863 1952
They overlapped for 48 years (1903–1950). When George Orwell was born, George Santayana was about 40. George Santayana was about 87 when George Orwell died.
George Orwell in history George Santayana in history Years they were given

On the map

About 8,037 km separate Motihari, Bengal, India from Madrid, Spain. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

George Orwell

George Santayana

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

world

George Orwell only

orwell power vicar authenticity

George Santayana only

solipsism reality suffering dream sorrow doubt self grief

From the biographies

George Orwell: motihari, bengal presidency, richard walmesley blair, ida mabel blair, st cyprian's, burma, down and out in paris and london, the road to wigan pier. George Santayana: madrid, rome, harvard, william james, lucifer: a theological tragedy, a hermit of carmel, sonnets and other verses, catholic atheist.

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.

A Happy Vicar I Might Have Been
George Orwell
74% world
Compare
Solipsism
George Santayana

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1903 Publication of 'The Path of Dreams'
1903 Publication of 'The Souls of Black Folk'
1903 Wright Brothers Achieve First Powered Flight Using Wind Tunnel Research
1906 Appointment as editor of Punch
1906 Publication of The Highwayman
1906 Upton Sinclair Publishes 'The Jungle'
1907 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
1908 Discovery of Oil at Masjid i-Sulaiman in Persia

George Orwell

1911 Orwell's Early Education at St Cyprian's School
1933 Publication of 'Down and Out in Paris and London'
1936 Marriage to Eileen O'Shaughnessy
1945 Death of Eileen O'Shaughnessy
1945 Publication of 'Animal Farm'
1946 Move to the Scottish Highlands
1948 Final Illness and Writing of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'
1949 Publication of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'

George Santayana

1869 Relocation to Boston
1882 Education at Harvard University
1890 Friendship with William James
1896 Publication of 'The Sense of Beauty'
1911 Publication of 'The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy'
1912 Move to Europe
1922 Publication of 'Soliloquies in England'
1952 Death of George Santayana

Emotional landscapes

George Orwell: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. George Santayana: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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