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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

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.

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

Philip Freneau Philip Freneau

Poet B

Robert Burns Robert Burns
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 67% Blended 67%
Swap sides Another related pair
Philip Freneau

Philip Freneau

2 January 1752 – 18 December 1832 (~80)
1 live poem · English

Philip Morin Freneau was born on 2 January 1752 in New York City and died on 18 December 1832 near his home in Monmouth County, New Jersey. During his long and restless life, he became a poet, sailor, merchant, editor, polemicist, farmer, husband, father, and partisan journalist. He has often been called the “Poet of the American Revolution,” a useful but incomplete title. Freneau did give memorable literary shape to…

“This is the last time I shall enter into such a business; it worries me to death and by no means suits my giddy, wandring brain.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Augustan Poets, Colonial American Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Sorrow, Despair
Robert Burns

Robert Burns

25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796 (~37)
33 live poems · English

Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, in southwestern Scotland, and died in Dumfries on 21 July 1796. In the relatively brief span of thirty-seven years, he became Scotland’s best-loved poet, a major maker and remaker of song, an incisive satirist, and an emblem of democratic fellow feeling. His reputation has sometimes obscured the complicated human being beneath it. Burns was…

“The appellation of a Scottish poet, I am proud of.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Poet-Musicians, Political Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Joy

In time

Philip Freneau
Robert Burns
1752 1832
They overlapped for 38 years (1759–1796). When Robert Burns was born, Philip Freneau was about 7. Philip Freneau was about 44 when Robert Burns died.

On the map

About 5,168 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland. 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

Philip Freneau only

Robert Burns only

From the biographies

Philip Freneau: new york city, monmouth county, the rising glory of america, james madison, hugh henry brackenridge, the wild honey suckle, the indian burying ground, the british prison ship. Robert Burns: alloway, dumfries, william burnes, jean armour, the twa dogs, to a mouse, the holy fair, kilmarnock edition.

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.

The Wild Honey Suckle
Philip Freneau
80% flower, life, death
Compare
The First Six Verses of the Ninetieth Psalm
Robert Burns
The Wild Honey Suckle
Philip Freneau
76% flower, life
Compare
Thou whom chance may hither lead
Robert Burns
The Wild Honey Suckle
Philip Freneau
75% beauty, life
Compare
A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns
The Wild Honey Suckle
Philip Freneau
74% beauty
Compare
Her Flowing Locks
Robert Burns
The Wild Honey Suckle
Philip Freneau
74% life, nature
Compare
The smiling Spring
Robert Burns
The Wild Honey Suckle
Philip Freneau
73% nature
Compare
The Banks O' Doon
Robert Burns

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Philip Freneau: Tenderness, Sorrow, Despair. Robert Burns: Tenderness, Longing, Joy.

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