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.

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

Hart Crane Hart Crane

Poet B

Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling
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 56% Poems 81% Blended 67%
Swap sides Another related pair
Hart Crane

Hart Crane

21 July 1899 – 27 April 1932 (~33)
40 live poems · English

Hart Crane’s life was a blaze of incandescent vision cut short by the very torments that fueled his art. Born Harold Hart Crane on July 21, 1899, in the quiet village of Garrettsville, Ohio, he arrived into a world already humming with the industrial promise that would later become the spine of his poetry. His father, Clarence A. Crane, was a shrewd and ambitious candy manufacturer who would one day invent the Life S…

“Suffering is a real purification, and the worst thing I have always had to say against Christian Science is that it wilfully avoided suffering.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936 (~71)
17 live poems · English

Rudyard Kipling was born Joseph Rudyard Kipling on December 30, 1865, in the bustling colonial port of Bombay, British India, a city that would forever pulse through his veins like the monsoon rains and the clamor of its streets. He died on January 18, 1936, in London, England, at the age of seventy, his body laid to rest in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey after a life that spanned the height of the British Empire…

“The only penalty youth must pay for its enviable privilege is that of listening to people known, alas, to be older and alleged to be wiser.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Hart Crane
Rudyard Kipling
1865 1936
They overlapped for 34 years (1899–1932). When Hart Crane was born, Rudyard Kipling was about 34. Rudyard Kipling was about 67 when Hart Crane died.
Hart Crane in history Rudyard Kipling in history Years they were given

On the map

About 12,789 km separate Garrettsville, Ohio, United States from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Hart Crane

Rudyard Kipling

Open both on the History Atlas

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

world life love self

Hart Crane only

beauty memory woman desire tree light stone eyes music wind moth death

Rudyard Kipling only

empire soldiers imperial soldier military power colonial tommy social duty india class

From the biographies

Hart Crane: garrettsville, cleveland, white buildings, the bridge, emil opffer, waldo frank, guggenheim fellowship, brooklyn bridge. Rudyard Kipling: bombay, westminster abbey, the jungle book, just so stories, kim, gunga din, the light that failed, caroline balestier.

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.

To the Cloud Juggler
Hart Crane
74%
Compare
An Astrologer's Song
Rudyard Kipling
Key West
Hart Crane
73% world
Compare
If-
Rudyard Kipling
Black Tambourine
Hart Crane
72%
Compare
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling
Imperator Victus
Hart Crane
72% power, empire, imperial
Compare
The Widow at Windsor
Rudyard Kipling
Key West
Hart Crane
72%
Compare
An Astrologer's Song
Rudyard Kipling
Lachrymae Christi
Hart Crane
72%
Compare
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1901 Establishment of the Nobel Prizes
1902 The Wright 1902 glider achieves practical three-axis control
1903 Publication of 'The Path of Dreams'
1903 Publication of 'The Souls of Black Folk'
1903 Wright Brothers Achieve First Powered Flight Using Wind Tunnel Research
1906 Appointment as editor of Punch
1906 Publication of The Highwayman
1906 Upton Sinclair Publishes 'The Jungle'

Hart Crane

1916 Hart Crane Moves to New York City and Begins Literary Career
1917 Hart Crane's First Major Publication and Recognition
1917 Parents' Divorce and Family Turmoil
1924 Residence in Brooklyn Heights with View of Brooklyn Bridge
1926 Publication of White Buildings
1928 Trip to Europe and Work on The Bridge
1930 Publication of The Bridge
1931 Guggenheim Fellowship and Time in Mexico

Rudyard Kipling

1881 Kipling's First Published Work
1892 Marriage to Caroline Balestier
1894 Publication of 'The Jungle Book'
1896 Kipling's Return to England
1899 Death of Daughter Josephine
1901 Publication of 'Kim'
1907 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
1914 Kipling's Involvement in World War I

Emotional landscapes

Hart Crane: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality. Rudyard Kipling: Irony, Sorrow, Longing.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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