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

Charles Sorley Charles Sorley

Poet B

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Sassoon
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 84% Poems 89% Blended 86%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charles Sorley

Charles Sorley

19 May 1895 – 13 October 1915 (~20)
8 live poems · English

Charles Hamilton Sorley was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 19 May 1895, and was killed in France on 13 October 1915, not yet twenty-one years old. His literary life lasted only a few years, and his published body of verse was small, much of it assembled after his death. Yet he occupies a singular place among the poets of the First World War. Unlike writers whose work became famous through prolonged service, later dis…

“The horrible thankfulness when one sees that the next man is dead: 'We won't have to carry him in under fire, thank God; dragging will do.' One is hardened by now: purged of all false pity: perhaps more selfish than before.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon

8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967 (~81)
21 live poems · English

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 at Weirleigh, a house near the village of Matfield in Kent, and died on 1 September 1967 at Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, a week before his eighty-first birthday. He remains one of the defining literary witnesses of the First World War: a poet whose plain speech, anger, technical control, and mordant irony broke through the patriotic consolations of his age. Yet…

“I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be wrong and unjust.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, LGBTQ+ Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony

In time

Charles Sorley
Siegfried Sassoon
1886 1967
They overlapped for 21 years (1895–1915). When Charles Sorley was born, Siegfried Sassoon was about 9. Siegfried Sassoon was about 29 when Charles Sorley died.

On the map

About 686 km separate Aberdeen, Scotland from Matfield, Kent, 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.

Shared

From the biographies

first world war robert graves gave

Charles Sorley: aberdeen, first world war, william ritchie sorley, robert graves, to germany, when you see millions of the mouthless dead, marlborough college, university college oxford. Siegfried Sassoon: matfield, heytesbury house, first world war, robert graves, the daffodil murderer, the old huntsman, counter-attack and other poems, military cross.

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.

To Germany
Charles Sorley
83%
Compare
Song-Books of the War
Siegfried Sassoon
To Germany
Charles Sorley
82%
Compare
Batallion Relief
Siegfried Sassoon
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Charles Sorley
82% death, dead
Compare
I Stood with the Dead
Siegfried Sassoon
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Charles Sorley
81% death
Compare
Trench Duty
Siegfried Sassoon
German Rain
Charles Sorley
81% world
Compare
Lamentations
Siegfried Sassoon
To Germany
Charles Sorley
80%
Compare
Memorial Tablet
Siegfried Sassoon

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Charles Sorley: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Siegfried Sassoon: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.

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