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

Mary Coleridge Mary Coleridge

Poet B

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 72% Poems 87% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Mary Coleridge

Mary Coleridge

23 September 1861 – 25 August 1907 (~46)
8 live poems · English

In the twilight of the Victorian era, when the literary world was dominated by towering figures like Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne, a quieter voice emerged from the shadows of London's Hyde Park Square. Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, born on September 23, 1861, would prove to be one of the most intriguing and underappreciated literary figures of her generation. Her life, spanning forty-six years until her death on Aug…

“Art is an odd thing, isn't it? It's almost the only thing that seems to me to remain unchanged throughout one's life.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Love Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861 (~55)
2 live poems · English

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806, at Coxhoe Hall in County Durham, England, the eldest of twelve children to Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. Her arrival marked the first in her family born in England in over two centuries, as the Barrett fortune stemmed from vast sugar plantations in Jamaica. The family soon moved to Hope End, a sprawling estate near Ledbury in Herefordshire…

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul, and the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness

In time

Mary Coleridge
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806 1907
They overlapped for 1 year (1861–1861). When Mary Coleridge was born, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was about 55. Mary Coleridge was about 0 when Elizabeth Barrett Browning died.

On the map

About 366 km separate Hyde Park Square, London, England from Durham, 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

women social

Mary Coleridge: london, hyde park square, samuel taylor coleridge, anodos, fancy's following, the king with two faces, christina rossetti, richard watson dixon. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: county durham, hope end, the battle of marathon, the seraphim and other poems, the cry of the children, robert browning, sonnets from the portuguese, aurora leigh.

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.

Contradictions
Mary Coleridge
81% love
Compare
How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I ask of thee, love, nothing but relief
Mary Coleridge
80% love
Compare
How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Furness Abbey
Mary Coleridge
76%
Compare
The Prospect
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Furness Abbey
Mary Coleridge
75%
Compare
How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Contradictions
Mary Coleridge
75% death
Compare
The Prospect
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Marriage
Mary Coleridge
74% love
Compare
How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Mary Coleridge: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness.

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