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

Robert W. Service Robert W. Service

Poet B

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy
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 59% Blended 59%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert W. Service

Robert W. Service

16 January 1874 – 11 September 1958 (~84)
1 live poem · English

Robert William Service was born on 16 January 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England, and died on 11 September 1958 at Lancieux, in Brittany, France. Few poets have occupied quite the cultural territory that Service came to possess. He was not, by his own candid admission, a poet of intricate philosophical argument or formal innovation. He called much of what he wrote “verse” rather than “poetry,” a distinction that re…

“I am an average sort of person who doesn't take anything seriously, least of all himself.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Despair, Sorrow
Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928 (~88)
41 live poems · English

Thomas Hardy stands as one of the most significant literary figures of the Victorian and early modern periods, a writer whose novels explored the tragic dimensions of human experience with unflinching honesty and whose poetry achieved a stark beauty that influenced generations of twentieth-century poets. Born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England, and dying on January 11, 1928, in Max Gate, Dorchest…

“A novel is an impression, not an argument.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair

In time

Robert W. Service
Thomas Hardy
1840 1958
They overlapped for 55 years (1874–1928). When Robert W. Service was born, Thomas Hardy was about 34. Robert W. Service was about 54 when Thomas Hardy died.

On the map

About 337 km separate Preston, Lancashire, England from Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

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

Robert W. Service: preston, bard of the yukon, the shooting of dan mcgrew, the cremation of sam mcgee, songs of a sourdough, the spell of the yukon, dawson city, klondike gold rush. Thomas Hardy: higher bockhampton, dorset, egdon heath, emma lavinia gifford, far from the madding crowd, the return of the native, the mayor of casterbridge, tess of the d'urbervilles.

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.

The Quitter
Robert W. Service
75% life, death
Compare
The Dead Man Walking
Thomas Hardy
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
73%
Compare
The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
72%
Compare
Wessex Heights
Thomas Hardy
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
71%
Compare
Hap
Thomas Hardy
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
71% life
Compare
To an Unborn Pauper Child
Thomas Hardy
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
71% life
Compare
The Ruined Maid
Thomas Hardy

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Robert W. Service: Fear, Despair, Sorrow. Thomas Hardy: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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