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

Robert Bridges Robert Bridges
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 71% Poems 84% Blended 77%
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…

“I find I can always give utterance to my own thoughts and feelings with more readiness, ease, and fluency, on paper than orally.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges

23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930 (~86)
4 live poems · English

Robert Seymour Bridges was born on 23 October 1844 at Walmer, near Deal in Kent, into a prosperous and cultivated English family whose security gave him both educational opportunity and, eventually, the independence to pursue literature without needing to earn his living from it. He was the fourth son of John Thomas Bridges and Harriet Elizabeth Bridges. His father had served in the navy and later held administrative…

“Poetry is the art of conveying thought in music.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder

In time

Bernard Barton
Robert Bridges
1784 1930
They overlapped for 6 years (1844–1849). When Robert Bridges was born, Bernard Barton was about 60. Robert Bridges was about 5 when Bernard Barton died.

On the map

About 502 km separate Carlisle, Cumberland, England from Walmer, Kent, 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. Robert Bridges: walmer, eton college, corpus christi college, gerard manley hopkins, the growth of love, london snow, st bartholomew's hospital, hospital for sick children.

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
78% life
Compare
Clear and Gentle Stream
Robert Bridges
On Some Pictures
Bernard Barton
75% life
Compare
Clear and Gentle Stream
Robert Bridges
All Is Vanity
Bernard Barton
75%
Compare
Wooing
Robert Bridges
All Is Vanity
Bernard Barton
73% life, world
Compare
Winter Nightfall
Robert Bridges
On Some Pictures
Bernard Barton
72%
Compare
Wooing
Robert Bridges
On True Worship
Bernard Barton
71%
Compare
Clear and Gentle Stream
Robert Bridges

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Bernard Barton: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace. Robert Bridges: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder.

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