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

Fernando Pessoa Fernando Pessoa

Poet B

Manuel Machado Manuel 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 69% Blended 69%
Swap sides Another related pair
Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935 (~47)
1 live poem · Portuguese

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was born in Lisbon on 13 June 1888 and died there on 30 November 1935, leaving behind a body of work so various, unfinished, and deliberately dispersed among invented authors that it altered the possibilities of modern literature. During his lifetime he published relatively little in book form and knew neither broad public fame nor financial ease. After his death, however, the vast ar…

“Solitude is the absence of company, and the lack of solitude is the absence of oneself.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Manuel Machado

Manuel Machado

29 August 1874 – 19 January 1947 (~73)
4 live poems · Spanish

Manuel Machado was born on August 29, 1874, in the heart of Seville, Spain, at number 20 on San Pedro Mártir Street, into a household that pulsed with the rhythms of Andalusian folklore and intellectual curiosity. His arrival came at two-thirty in the morning, under the warm embrace of a city where orange blossoms scented the air and the distant echo of guitars hinted at the deep songs that would later infuse his poe…

“I see no path for the artist other than to cultivate his personality with the utmost care and improve it without cease.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Fernando Pessoa
Manuel Machado
1874 1947
They overlapped for 48 years (1888–1935). When Fernando Pessoa was born, Manuel Machado was about 14. Manuel Machado was about 61 when Fernando Pessoa died.
Fernando Pessoa in history Manuel Machado in history Years they were given

On the map

About 312 km separate Lisbon, Portugal from Seville, Spain. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Fernando Pessoa

Manuel Machado

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.

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

Fernando Pessoa only

history heaven abyss suffering tears soul maritime

Manuel Machado only

spanish virgin sonnet faith heart name devotion landscape desire self love adelfos

From the biographies

Fernando Pessoa: lisbon, heteronyms, mário de sá-carneiro, orpheu, alberto caeiro, álvaro de campos, ricardo reis, durban. Manuel Machado: seville, andalusian folklore, antonio machado álvarez, demófilo, generation of '98, paris, paul verlaine, alma.

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.

Portuguese Sea
Fernando Pessoa
75%
Compare
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
Portuguese Sea
Fernando Pessoa
69%
Compare
Sevillanas
Manuel Machado
Portuguese Sea
Fernando Pessoa
67%
Compare
¡Viva la Virgen del Rocío!
Manuel Machado
Portuguese Sea
Fernando Pessoa
66%
Compare
La caseta de feria
Manuel Machado

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks

Fernando Pessoa

1893 Pessoa's Relocation to Durban
1905 Return to Lisbon
1914 Establishment of Heteronyms
1915 Friendship with Mário de Sá-Carneiro
1915 Involvement with the Orpheu Magazine
1915 Meeting with Almada Negreiros
1934 Publication of 'Mensagem'
1982 Publication of 'O Livro do Desassossego'

Manuel Machado

1883 Education at Institución Libre de Enseñanza
1901 First Published Work
1909 Marriage to Concha Méndez
1911 Publication of 'El poema de los pueblos'
1930 Publication of 'Cuentos de la vida de un poeta'
1936 Exile during Spanish Civil War
1939 Return to Spain after Exile
1940 Final Years and Literary Legacy

Emotional landscapes

Fernando Pessoa: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing. Manuel Machado: Joy, Sensuality, Longing.

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