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

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott

Poet B

James Beattie James Beattie
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
Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott

15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832 (~61)
2 live poems · English

Sir Walter Scott, born in Edinburgh on 15 August 1771 and dead at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832, became one of the most influential writers in the English language: a poet who dominated the reading public before Byron, a novelist who effectively established the modern historical novel, an editor and antiquarian who preserved Scottish oral traditions, a lawyer and public official, a conservative political figure, an…

“But I can see as many castles in the clouds as any man, as many genii in the curling smoke of a steam engine, as perfect a Persepolis in the embers of a sea-coal fire.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
James Beattie

James Beattie

25 October 1735 – 18 August 1803 (~68)
2 live poems · English

James Beattie, born on 25 October 1735 and dead on 18 August 1803, occupied an unusual and revealing place in eighteenth-century British culture. He was at once a Scottish professor, a poet of landscape and sensibility, a popular moral philosopher, a Christian apologist, a music lover, a man of sociable ambition, and a bereaved father whose final years were darkened by illness and loss. In his own lifetime he was fam…

“Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.”

Neighbourhood: Enlightenment Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sir Walter Scott
James Beattie
1735 1832
They overlapped for 33 years (1771–1803). When Sir Walter Scott was born, James Beattie was about 36. Sir Walter Scott was about 32 when James Beattie died.
Sir Walter Scott in history James Beattie in history Years they were given

On the map

About 105 km separate Edinburgh, Scotland from Laurencekirk, Kincardineshire, Scotland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Sir Walter Scott

James Beattie

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

death life

Sir Walter Scott only

robin proud marriage bird social spindle spinning pain thread pleasure fear hope

James Beattie only

beattie epitaph dead self hermit philosophical nature spiritual journey

From the biographies

scottish

Sir Walter Scott: edinburgh, abbotsford, charlotte carpenter, minstrelsy of the scottish border, the lay of the last minstrel, marmion, the lady of the lake, rokeby. James Beattie: laurencekirk, kincardineshire, the minstrel, original poems and translations, an essay on the nature and immutability of truth, samuel johnson, thomas gray, robert arbuthnot.

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.

Proud Maisie
Sir Walter Scott
78% death
Compare
The Hermit
James Beattie
Proud Maisie
Sir Walter Scott
77%
Compare
An Epitaph
James Beattie
The Spindle Song
Sir Walter Scott
71%
Compare
The Hermit
James Beattie
The Spindle Song
Sir Walter Scott
69% life
Compare
An Epitaph
James Beattie

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1773 Publication of 'Poems on Various Subjects'
1774 Goethe publishes The Sorrows of Young Werther
1775 American Revolution Begins
1777 The Battles of Saratoga bring France towards the American alliance
1783 The Treaty of Paris (1783) Secures American Independence
1787 The Northwest Ordinance of 1787
1789 French Revolution Begins
1789 The Bastille Stormed — Prison Fortress Falls

Sir Walter Scott

1783 Education at the University of Edinburgh
1797 Marriage to Charlotte Margaret Carpenter
1805 Publication of 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel'
1808 Publication of 'Marmion'
1810 Publication of 'The Lady of the Lake'
1811 Establishment of Abbotsford as a Literary Retreat
1820 Involvement in the Scottish Literary Society
1826 Death of Charlotte Scott

James Beattie

1749 Education at Marischal College
1753 Position as Schoolmaster in Fordoun
1771 Publication of 'The Minstrel'
1774 Publication of 'The Minstrel' (Part II)
1776 Publication of 'The Essay on Truth'
1777 Appointment as Professor of Moral Philosophy
1796 Death of his wife Mary
1800 Publication of 'The Poetical Works'

Emotional landscapes

Sir Walter Scott: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing. James Beattie: Sorrow, Tenderness, Spirituality.

Skip to main content