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

Manuel Machado Manuel Machado

Poet B

Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins
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 64% Poems 78% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
Manuel Machado

Manuel Machado

29 August 1874 – 19 January 1947 (~73)
4 live poems · Spanish

Manuel Machado was born on August 29, 1874, in the heart of Seville, Spain, at number 20 on San Pedro Mártir Street, into a household that pulsed with the rhythms of Andalusian folklore and intellectual curiosity. His arrival came at two-thirty in the morning, under the warm embrace of a city where orange blossoms scented the air and the distant echo of guitars hinted at the deep songs that would later infuse his poe…

“I do not object to the new; after all, it too will grow old, such is the sadness of life.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Longing
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins

28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889 (~45)
17 live poems · English

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, in Stratford, Essex, which has since been absorbed into the bustling expanse of Greater London. He entered the world as the eldest of what would become nine children in a prosperous, artistic, and devout High Church Anglican family. His father, Manley Hopkins, was a successful marine insurance adjuster who also served as the Hawaiian consul-general in London and dabble…

“What you look hard at seems to look hard at you, whether you look at a thing or a person.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing

In time

Manuel Machado
Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844 1947
They overlapped for 16 years (1874–1889). When Manuel Machado was born, Gerard Manley Hopkins was about 30. Manuel Machado was about 15 when Gerard Manley Hopkins died.

On the map

About 1,709 km separate Seville, Spain from Stratford, Essex, England. 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

Manuel Machado: seville, andalusian folklore, antonio machado álvarez, demófilo, generation of '98, paris, paul verlaine, alma. Gerard Manley Hopkins: stratford, essex, robert bridges, the wreck of the deutschland, sprung rhythm, oxford movement, john henry newman, society of jesus, terrible sonnets.

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.

Adelfos
Manuel Machado
76% self, love
Compare
The Beginning of the End
Gerard Manley Hopkins
¡Viva la Virgen del Rocío!
Manuel Machado
72%
Compare
In the Valley of the Elwy
Gerard Manley Hopkins
¡Viva la Virgen del Rocío!
Manuel Machado
72% faith
Compare
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
Gerard Manley Hopkins
¡Viva la Virgen del Rocío!
Manuel Machado
72% heart
Compare
The Handsome Heart
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
70%
Compare
The Sea and the Skylark
Gerard Manley Hopkins
¡Viva la Virgen del Rocío!
Manuel Machado
70% faith
Compare
Lines for a Picture of St. Dorothea
Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Manuel Machado: Joy, Sensuality, Longing. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.

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