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

Charles Mackay Charles Mackay

Poet B

Robinson Jeffers Robinson Jeffers
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 55% Poems 78% Blended 65%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charles Mackay

Charles Mackay

27 March 1814 – 24 December 1889 (~75)
3 live poems · English

Charles Mackay was born in Perth, Scotland, on 27 March 1814, and died in London on 24 December 1889. During a long and unusually various career, he became known as a poet, songwriter, editor, journalist, historian of London, commentator on social life, and author of one of the nineteenth century’s most durable books of cultural psychology, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. He was never quite…

“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Joy, Peace
Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers

10 January 1887 – 20 January 1962 (~75)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American poetry, few figures stand as simultaneously revered and controversial as Robinson Jeffers, the brooding visionary who built his stone tower on the wild coast of California and crafted verses as uncompromising as the granite cliffs that inspired them. Born John Robinson Jeffers on January 10, 1887, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he would become one of the twentieth century's most distinctive…

“I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are interdependent, and therefore one part cannot be separated from the whole.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Wonder

In time

Charles Mackay
Robinson Jeffers
1814 1962
They overlapped for 3 years (1887–1889). When Robinson Jeffers was born, Charles Mackay was about 73. Robinson Jeffers was about 2 when Charles Mackay died.

On the map

About 5,599 km separate Perth, Scotland from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. 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

Charles Mackay: perth, extraordinary popular delusions, the madness of crowds, cheer boys cheer, the good time coming, morning chronicle, glasgow argus, victorian man of letters. Robinson Jeffers: inhumanism, tor house, hawk tower, una call kuster, big sur, california coast, the bowl of blood, tamar and other poems.

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 Lark
Charles Mackay
74% world, life
Compare
Hurt Hawks
Robinson Jeffers
The Lark
Charles Mackay
72%
Compare
Natural Music
Robinson Jeffers
Coronach, or Death-Wail
Charles Mackay
66% death
Compare
Hurt Hawks
Robinson Jeffers
The Miller of the Dee
Charles Mackay
63%
Compare
Natural Music
Robinson Jeffers
Coronach, or Death-Wail
Charles Mackay
62%
Compare
Natural Music
Robinson Jeffers
The Miller of the Dee
Charles Mackay
58% life
Compare
Hurt Hawks
Robinson Jeffers

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Charles Mackay: Longing, Joy, Peace. Robinson Jeffers: Longing, Spirituality, Wonder.

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