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

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan

Poet B

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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 44% Poems 79% Blended 60%
Swap sides Another related pair
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan

22 March 1808 – 15 June 1877 (~69)
10 live poems · English

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan, later Caroline Norton and, in the final months of her life, Lady Stirling-Maxwell, was born in London on 22 March 1808 and died in London on 15 June 1877. She was a poet, novelist, dramatist, political hostess, journalist, pamphleteer, and one of the most consequential campaigners for married women’s legal rights in nineteenth-century Britain. Her fame during her lifetime rested partly on…

“The law gives the husband the custody of the children, and the right to decide where they shall live, and how they shall be educated.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
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…

“When one is old, one must do more than when one was young.”

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

In time

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749 1877
They overlapped for 25 years (1808–1832). When Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan was born, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was about 59. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan was about 24 when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died.

On the map

About 639 km separate Mayfair, London from Frankfurt, Germany. 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

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan: london, caroline henrietta callander, the sorrows of rosalie, the undying one, george chapple norton, lord melbourne, custody of infants act 1839, richard brinsley sheridan. 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.

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.

Oh, Love Me! Love Me Still!
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
75% love
Compare
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When Poor in All but Hope and Love
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
73% love
Compare
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When First I Loved Thee
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
71% love, self
Compare
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love Not
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
71% love
Compare
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I Do Not Love Thee
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
70% love, self
Compare
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Farewell
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
70% love, heart
Compare
Sehnsucht
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow.

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