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

Bernard Barton Bernard Barton

Poet B

William Johnson Cory William Johnson Cory
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 79% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
Bernard Barton

Bernard Barton

31 January 1784 – 19 February 1849 (~65)
3 live poems · English

In the quiet market town of Woodbridge, Suffolk, where the River Deben winds its way toward the North Sea, lived one of the 19th century's most prolific yet paradoxical literary figures. Bernard Barton (1784-1849) occupied a unique position in English literature—a devout Quaker who found himself torn between the commercial demands of banking and the irrepressible call of poetry. His life story reads like a gentle reb…

“No age, sex, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one is vastly beneath the rank of man.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
William Johnson Cory

William Johnson Cory

9 January 1823 – 11 June 1892 (~69)
2 live poems · English

William Johnson Cory, born William Johnson on 9 January 1823 and dead on 11 June 1892, occupies an unusual but durable place in English literary history. He was never a major public poet in the Victorian manner of Tennyson or Browning; he published relatively little, lived much of his life within the secluded world of elite education, and became known to many readers through a small collection rather than a grand car…

“Nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness

In time

Bernard Barton
William Johnson Cory
1784 1892
They overlapped for 27 years (1823–1849). When William Johnson Cory was born, Bernard Barton was about 39. William Johnson Cory was about 26 when Bernard Barton died.

On the map

About 445 km separate Carlisle, Cumberland, England from Great Torrington, Devon, England. Both have ground in England.

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

social

Bernard Barton: woodbridge, carlisle, quaker, charles lamb, lucy jesup, metrical effusions, poems, the convict's return. William Johnson Cory: great torrington, eton college, king's college cambridge, ionica, mimnermus in church, heraclitus, the two captains, a lesson.

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.

All Is Vanity
Bernard Barton
73% life
Compare
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
On Some Pictures
Bernard Barton
72%
Compare
Heraclitus
William Johnson Cory
All Is Vanity
Bernard Barton
70%
Compare
Heraclitus
William Johnson Cory
On Some Pictures
Bernard Barton
68% life
Compare
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
On True Worship
Bernard Barton
67%
Compare
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
On True Worship
Bernard Barton
66%
Compare
Heraclitus
William Johnson Cory

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Bernard Barton: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace. William Johnson Cory: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness.

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