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

Robert Burns Robert Burns
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 64% Poems 79% Blended 71%
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 free soul like his is in danger of becoming insolent unless noble goodwill restores the moral balance.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, German Romantics, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Robert Burns

Robert Burns

25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796 (~37)
33 live poems · English

Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, in southwestern Scotland, and died in Dumfries on 21 July 1796. In the relatively brief span of thirty-seven years, he became Scotland’s best-loved poet, a major maker and remaker of song, an incisive satirist, and an emblem of democratic fellow feeling. His reputation has sometimes obscured the complicated human being beneath it. Burns was…

“A poet is a creature of impulse, and must follow the bent of his own genius.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Poet-Musicians, Political Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Joy

In time

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Robert Burns
1749 1832
They overlapped for 38 years (1759–1796). When Robert Burns was born, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was about 10. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was about 47 when Robert Burns died.

On the map

About 1,071 km separate Frankfurt, Germany from Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland. 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

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. Robert Burns: alloway, dumfries, william burnes, jean armour, the twa dogs, to a mouse, the holy fair, kilmarnock edition.

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
74%
Compare
Thou whom chance may hither lead
Robert Burns
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
74% love
Compare
Had I a cave
Robert Burns
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
74% self
Compare
Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
Robert Burns
Wanderer's Nightsong
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
73% world, death
Compare
The First Six Verses of the Ninetieth Psalm
Robert Burns
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
72% love
Compare
A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns
Wanderer's Nightsong
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
71%
Compare
Had I a cave
Robert Burns

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. Robert Burns: Tenderness, Longing, Joy.

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