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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Isaac Rosenberg Isaac Rosenberg

Poet B

Wilfred Owen Wilfred Owen
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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 77% Poems 88% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg

25 November 1890 – 1 April 1918 (~28)
4 live poems · English

Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol on 25 November 1890 and killed in France on 1 April 1918, at the age of twenty-seven. His brief life has come to seem almost emblematic of a generation interrupted by the First World War, yet his achievement cannot be understood merely as the achievement of a “war poet.” Rosenberg was also a painter, draughtsman, reader, self-educator, son of Jewish immigrants, East End Londoner, a…

“I am determined that my poetry shall have the same primitive power as a painting.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Georgian Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Fear
Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918 (~25)
20 live poems · English

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on 18 March 1893 at Plas Wilmot, a house near Oswestry in Shropshire, on the borderland between England and Wales. He was the eldest of four children of Thomas Owen and Susan Shaw Owen; his siblings were Mary, Harold, and Colin. The family’s circumstances were respectable but precarious. Thomas had once been employed as a railway stationmaster, and Susan came from a family with str…

“Thus you see how pure Christianity will not fit in with pure patriotism.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony

In time

Isaac Rosenberg
Wilfred Owen
1890 1918
They overlapped for 26 years (1893–1918). When Wilfred Owen was born, Isaac Rosenberg was about 3.

On the map

About 159 km separate Bristol, England from Oswestry, Shropshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom, France.

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

first world war

Isaac Rosenberg: bristol, first world war, jewish immigrants, east end london, stepney, whitechapel, night and day, break of day in the trenches. Wilfred Owen: oswestry, shropshire, siegfried sassoon, dulce et decorum est, anthem for doomed youth, futility, strange meeting, disabled.

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.

Dead Man's Dump
Isaac Rosenberg
84% death
Compare
Dulce et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen
Dead Man's Dump
Isaac Rosenberg
82%
Compare
The Sentry
Wilfred Owen
Dead Man's Dump
Isaac Rosenberg
82% dead, death
Compare
Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen
Dead Man's Dump
Isaac Rosenberg
82% life, death
Compare
Spring Offensive
Wilfred Owen
Dead Man's Dump
Isaac Rosenberg
82%
Compare
Apologia pro Poemate Meo
Wilfred Owen
Dead Man's Dump
Isaac Rosenberg
82% dead, death
Compare
The Dead-Beat
Wilfred Owen

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Isaac Rosenberg: Sorrow, Despair, Fear. Wilfred Owen: Sorrow, Despair, Irony.

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