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

Ada Cambridge Ada Cambridge

Poet B

Violet Jacob Violet Jacob
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 69% Poems 85% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ada Cambridge

Ada Cambridge

21 November 1844 – 19 July 1926 (~82)
6 live poems · English

Ada Cambridge, who would become one of colonial Australia's most prolific and quietly subversive literary voices, was born on 21 November 1844 at St Germans, Norfolk, England. She was the second child of Thomasine and Henry Cambridge, a gentleman farmer of comfortable means. The Norfolk countryside, with its flat, expansive skies and ancient, weathered churches, would seep into her imagination and later resurface in…

“At any rate the religious faith of the fifties as to which we were all children, young and old alike, it had one precious quality that it seems never likely to have again—it sufficed.”

Neighbourhood: Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Violet Jacob

Violet Jacob

1 September 1863 – 9 September 1946 (~83)
3 live poems · English

On the eastern coast of Scotland, where the North Sea meets the fertile lands of Angus, stands the House of Dun—a Georgian mansion that witnessed the birth of one of Scotland's most distinctive literary voices. It was here, on 1 September 1863, that Violet Augusta Mary Frederica Kennedy-Erskine entered the world, destined to become the poet and novelist who would capture the very essence of Scottish rural life in ver…

“It will never leave me while I live. He is so near me often …”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness

In time

Ada Cambridge
Violet Jacob
1844 1946
They overlapped for 64 years (1863–1926). When Violet Jacob was born, Ada Cambridge was about 19. Violet Jacob was about 63 when Ada Cambridge died.

On the map

About 485 km separate St Germans, Norfolk, England from House of Dun, Angus, Scotland. 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.

Shared

From the biographies

Ada Cambridge: st germans, norfolk, george frederick cross, the retrospect, hymns on the litany, hymns on the holy communion, up the murray, a marked man. Violet Jacob: house of dun, angus, scottish rural life, william henry kennedy-erskine, catherine jones, diaries and letters from india 1895-1900, flemington, celtic revival.

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.

Despair
Ada Cambridge
81% life
Compare
A Winter Phantasy
Violet Jacob
Despair
Ada Cambridge
78% love
Compare
Bonnie Joann
Violet Jacob
After Our Likeness
Ada Cambridge
77% life, death
Compare
A Winter Phantasy
Violet Jacob
Craven-Heart
Ada Cambridge
75% world, life, self
Compare
A Winter Phantasy
Violet Jacob
Desire
Ada Cambridge
75%
Compare
A Winter Phantasy
Violet Jacob
Desire
Ada Cambridge
74% love
Compare
Bonnie Joann
Violet Jacob

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ada Cambridge: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Violet Jacob: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness.

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