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

Allan Cunningham Allan Cunningham

Poet B

Thomas Paine Thomas Paine
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 58% Blended 58%
Swap sides Another related pair
Allan Cunningham

Allan Cunningham

7 December 1784 – 30 October 1842 (~58)
3 live poems · English

Allan Cunningham was born on 7 December 1784 at Blackwood, near Dalswinton in Dumfriesshire, a district of south-west Scotland whose landscape, speech, songs, and historical memories remained central to his imagination throughout his life. He died in London on 30 October 1842, having travelled an unlikely path from the stone-mason’s yard to the centre of Britain’s artistic and literary world. Poet, songwriter, noveli…

“I would not lie like a toad in a stone, or in a place strong enough for another to covet. Oh! no; let me lie where the green grass and the daisies grow, waving under the winds of the blue heaven.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Spirituality
Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine

9 February 1737 – 8 June 1809 (~72)
1 live poem · English

Thomas Paine, born 9 February 1737 and dead on 8 June 1809, was one of the most consequential writers of the revolutionary Atlantic world. He was not primarily a poet in the conventional sense, nor should his occasional verses be allowed to obscure the achievement for which he is remembered: he made political argument into a popular literary force. In pamphlets, newspaper essays, public letters, and philosophical tre…

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Enlightenment Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Sensuality, Joy

In time

Allan Cunningham
Thomas Paine
1737 1842
They overlapped for 26 years (1784–1809). When Allan Cunningham was born, Thomas Paine was about 47. Allan Cunningham was about 25 when Thomas Paine died.

On the map

About 415 km separate Keir, Dumfriesshire, Scotland from Thetford, Norfolk, 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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

From the biographies

Allan Cunningham: blackwood, dumfriesshire, jean walker, robert burns, sir walter scott, william wordsworth, a wet sheet and a flowing sea, the sun rises bright in france. Thomas Paine: thetford, norfolk, common sense, the american crisis, benjamin franklin, mary lambert, elizabeth ollive, deism.

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.

Nature
Allan Cunningham
70% romantic
Compare
What Is Love?
Thomas Paine
A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea
Allan Cunningham
66%
Compare
What Is Love?
Thomas Paine
The Mother's Call
Allan Cunningham
64%
Compare
What Is Love?
Thomas Paine

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Allan Cunningham: Wonder, Joy, Spirituality. Thomas Paine: Wonder, Sensuality, Joy.

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