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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Poet B

Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
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 80% Blended 69%
Swap sides Another related pair
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832 (~83)
2 live poems · German

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born 28 August 1749 in Frankfurt am Main and dead 22 March 1832 in Weimar, became during his own lifetime a European institution: poet, dramatist, novelist, critic, civil servant, theater director, scientific investigator, memoirist, and theorist of culture. To call him Germany’s greatest writer is conventional but not empty praise. Goethe helped give the German language a literary authori…

“A person who has lived for a long time amid important circumstances will not encounter everything that can happen to a human being, but will encounter its equivalents.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, German Romantics, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

8 November 1831 – 24 November 1891 (~60)
4 live poems · English

The Victorian era produced many remarkable figures who straddled the worlds of literature and public service, but few navigated this dual existence with quite the complexity of Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831-1891), better known to the literary world by his pen name Owen Meredith. Born into literary aristocracy and destined for diplomatic greatness, Lytton embodied the tensions and contradiction…

“The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great deal of it yourself.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing

In time

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
1749 1891
They overlapped for 2 years (1831–1832). When Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton was born, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was about 82. Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton was about 1 when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died.

On the map

About 638 km separate Frankfurt, Germany from London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe only

Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton only

From the biographies

social

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: frankfurt am main, weimar, sturm und drang, the sorrows of young werther, götz von berlichingen, anna katharina schönkopf, friederike brion, charlotte von stein. Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton: owen meredith, viceroy of india, clytemnestra, the wanderer, lucile, benjamin disraeli, delhi durbar, second afghan war.

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.

Wanderer's Nightsong
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
69%
Compare
Consolation
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
Wanderer's Nightsong
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
69%
Compare
The Magic Land
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
69% heart, self
Compare
Consolation
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
67% desire
Compare
The Vampire
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
Wanderer's Nightsong
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
66%
Compare
Ode to a Starling
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton
Wanderer's Nightsong
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
63% death
Compare
The Vampire
Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

Skip to main content