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

Josephine Preston Peabody Josephine Preston Peabody

Poet B

Charles Sorley Charles Sorley
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 62% Poems 82% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
Josephine Preston Peabody

Josephine Preston Peabody

30 May 1874 – 4 December 1922 (~48)
2 live poems · English

Josephine Preston Peabody, later Josephine Preston Peabody Marks, was born in New York City on 30 May 1874 and died on 4 December 1922. During her comparatively short life she became one of the most admired American poets and verse dramatists of the early twentieth century. She was praised for a voice at once musical, delicate, morally serious, and theatrically ambitious. Her poetry moved easily among childhood, myth…

“One never learns by success. Success is the plateau that one rests upon to take breath and look down from upon the straight and difficult path, but one does not climb upon a plateau.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
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 war is a great thing, but it is not the greatest thing.”

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

In time

Josephine Preston Peabody
Charles Sorley
1874 1922
They overlapped for 21 years (1895–1915). When Charles Sorley was born, Josephine Preston Peabody was about 21. Josephine Preston Peabody was about 41 when Charles Sorley died.

On the map

About 5,282 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Aberdeen, 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

gave

Josephine Preston Peabody: new york city, dorchester, the piper, lionel s. marks, the singing leaves, the wayfarers, radcliffe college, george santayana. 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.

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 Enchanted Sheep-Fold
Josephine Preston Peabody
74% world
Compare
East Kennet Church at Evening
Charles Sorley
The Reed
Josephine Preston Peabody
72%
Compare
Rooks
Charles Sorley
The Reed
Josephine Preston Peabody
72%
Compare
German Rain
Charles Sorley
The Reed
Josephine Preston Peabody
71%
Compare
If I have suffered pain
Charles Sorley
The Enchanted Sheep-Fold
Josephine Preston Peabody
71% world, birds
Compare
Rooks
Charles Sorley
The Enchanted Sheep-Fold
Josephine Preston Peabody
70% world
Compare
German Rain
Charles Sorley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Josephine Preston Peabody: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality. Charles Sorley: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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