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

Barry Cornwall Barry Cornwall

Poet B

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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 86% Blended 74%
Swap sides Another related pair
Barry Cornwall

Barry Cornwall

21 November 1787 – 5 October 1874 (~87)
10 live poems · English

Bryan Waller Procter, known to generations of readers by the literary name Barry Cornwall, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 21 November 1787, and died in London on 5 October 1874. He belonged to that broad, fascinating company of early nineteenth-century writers who stood close to the great Romantic generation without ever wholly entering its innermost circle. He was not a poet of Byron’s volcanic self-dramatization,…

“What teacher has ever endeavored to instil into his pupils the value of weeds or grasses, of animal or vegetable nature... the wonders of space, or of the seasons; of night, of silence?”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882 (~54)
5 live poems · English

In the annals of Victorian literature and art, few figures burn as brightly or as contradictorily as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). Born Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti on May 12, 1828, in London, he would reverse his given names to honor the great Italian poet who profoundly influenced his work and worldview. A man of extraordinary artistic vision who helped revolutionize British poetry and painting, Rossetti em…

“The purpose of art is not to copy nature, but to create a beautiful equivalent.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Tenderness, Sorrow

In time

Barry Cornwall
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1787 1882
They overlapped for 47 years (1828–1874). When Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born, Barry Cornwall was about 41. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was about 46 when Barry Cornwall died.

On the map

About 270 km separate Leeds, Yorkshire, England from 38 Charlotte Street, London, England. Both have ground in London.

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

romantic london

Barry Cornwall: leeds, charles lamb, adelaide anne procter, dramatic scenes and other poems, the life of edmund kean, english songs, the sea, touch us gently, time!. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: london, pre-raphaelite brotherhood, the blessed damozel, elizabeth siddal, highgate cemetery, the house of life, john everett millais, william holman hunt.

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.

Sit Down, Sad Soul
Barry Cornwall
78% love
Compare
Even So
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
A Poet's Thought
Barry Cornwall
77%
Compare
Even So
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Sit Down, Sad Soul
Barry Cornwall
76% grief
Compare
The Woodspurge
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Peace! what do tears avail?
Barry Cornwall
75%
Compare
Even So
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Peace! what do tears avail?
Barry Cornwall
74% grief
Compare
The Woodspurge
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
A Poet's Thought
Barry Cornwall
74%
Compare
A Young Fir-Wood
Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Barry Cornwall: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Wonder, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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