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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Poet B

Allan Ramsay Allan Ramsay
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 55% Poems 70% Blended 62%
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…

“The false has the advantage that one can always talk about it; the true must be used at once, otherwise it is gone.”

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

Allan Ramsay

c. 15 October 1684 – 7 January 1758 (~74)
2 live poems · English

Allan Ramsay was born around 15 October 1684 (some sources cite 1685 or 1686) in the rugged mining village of Leadhills, Lanarkshire, Scotland. He entered the world in a place defined by the harsh rhythms of lead extraction, where the hills echoed with the labor of men toiling for the Hopetoun estates. His father, Robert Ramsay, served as manager of Lord Hopetoun’s lead mines, a position of modest responsibility that…

“That I have expressed my Thought in my native Dialect, was not only my Inclination, but the Desire of my best and wisest Friends; and most reasonable, since good Imagery, just Similes, and all Manner of ingenious Thoughts, in a well laid Design, disposed into Numbers, is Poetry. Then good Poetry may be in any Language.”

Neighbourhood: Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Peace

In time

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Allan Ramsay
1684 1832
They overlapped for 10 years (1749–1758). When Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, Allan Ramsay was about 65. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was about 9 when Allan Ramsay died.

On the map

About 1,022 km separate Frankfurt, Germany from Leadhills, Lanarkshire, 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

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. Allan Ramsay: leadhills, lanarkshire, christian ross, the gentle shepherd, the ever green, the tea-table miscellany, jacobite, scots dialect.

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
Up in the Air
Allan Ramsay
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
61%
Compare
Up in the Air
Allan Ramsay
Wanderer's Nightsong
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
60%
Compare
My Peggy is a young thing
Allan Ramsay
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
56% love
Compare
My Peggy is a young thing
Allan Ramsay

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. Allan Ramsay: Joy, Tenderness, Peace.

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