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

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Poet B

Samuel Rogers Samuel Rogers
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 60% Poems 78% Blended 68%
Swap sides Another related pair
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861 (~55)
2 live poems · English

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806, at Coxhoe Hall in County Durham, England, the eldest of twelve children to Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. Her arrival marked the first in her family born in England in over two centuries, as the Barrett fortune stemmed from vast sugar plantations in Jamaica. The family soon moved to Hope End, a sprawling estate near Ledbury in Herefordshire…

“I never wrote a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took me at the right moment!”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness
Samuel Rogers

Samuel Rogers

30 July 1763 – 18 December 1855 (~92)
2 live poems · English

Samuel Rogers was born on 30 July 1763 at Newington Green, then a village on the northern edge of London and now part of the capital’s urban fabric. He died on 18 December 1855, aged ninety-two, having outlived nearly every major writer of the generation with which he was associated. His long life stretched from the late age of Samuel Johnson to the early reign of Queen Victoria; he knew the world before the French R…

“The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who reads too.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Joy, Peace

In time

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Samuel Rogers
1763 1861
They overlapped for 50 years (1806–1855). When Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born, Samuel Rogers was about 43. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was about 49 when Samuel Rogers died.

On the map

About 373 km separate Durham, England from Deptford, London, 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

social

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: county durham, hope end, the battle of marathon, the seraphim and other poems, the cry of the children, robert browning, sonnets from the portuguese, aurora leigh. Samuel Rogers: newington green, the pleasures of memory, an ode to superstition, thomas gray, william collins, oliver goldsmith, victorian novel, dissenting community.

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 Prospect
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
74% life, death
Compare
To the Butterfly
Samuel Rogers
How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
69%
Compare
To the Butterfly
Samuel Rogers
How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
61%
Compare
A Wish
Samuel Rogers
The Prospect
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
59% life
Compare
A Wish
Samuel Rogers

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness. Samuel Rogers: Spirituality, Joy, Peace.

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