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

Paul Valéry Paul Valéry
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 62% Poems 81% Blended 71%
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,…

“I have noticed, too, that the immortality inflicted by critics has sometimes speedily come to an end.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry

30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945 (~74)
3 live poems · French

In the autumn of 1871, as France was still reeling from the trauma of the Franco-Prussian War and the violent suppression of the Paris Commune, a child was born in the Mediterranean port town of Sète who would become one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary intellects. Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry entered the world on October 30th, in a region where the brilliant southern light seemed to sharpe…

“Every philosophy could be reduced to laboriously seeking what one already knows naturally.”

Neighbourhood: French Symbolists, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality

In time

Barry Cornwall
Paul Valéry
1787 1945
They overlapped for 4 years (1871–1874). When Paul Valéry was born, Barry Cornwall was about 84. Paul Valéry was about 3 when Barry Cornwall died.

On the map

About 1,218 km separate Leeds, Yorkshire, England from Sète, Occitanie, France. 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

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!. Paul Valéry: sète, franco-prussian war, paris commune, symbolist movement, stéphane mallarmé, la jeune parque, le cimetière marin, charmes.

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.

Peace! what do tears avail?
Barry Cornwall
74%
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry
Sit Down, Sad Soul
Barry Cornwall
74%
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry
A Poet's Thought
Barry Cornwall
74% inspiration
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry
Love Me if I Live
Barry Cornwall
71%
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry
The Old Witch in the Copse
Barry Cornwall
71%
Compare
Poésie
Paul Valéry
History of a Life
Barry Cornwall
70% death
Compare
La Fileuse
Paul Valéry

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Barry Cornwall: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness. Paul Valéry: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.

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