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

Gerald Massey Gerald Massey

Poet B

Matthew Arnold Matthew Arnold
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 75% Poems 83% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Gerald Massey

Gerald Massey

29 May 1828 – 29 October 1907 (~79)
3 live poems · English

Gerald Massey, born on 29 May 1828 in Tring, Hertfordshire, and dead on 29 October 1907 in South Norwood, London, lived one of the most striking self-made literary lives of the Victorian age. He was a poet, lecturer, editor, radical reformer, Shakespearean commentator, spiritual seeker, and amateur investigator of comparative religion. In each of these roles he carried the imprint of his beginnings: he had known chil…

“They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth.”

Neighbourhood: Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Anger, Despair
Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888 (~66)
12 live poems · English

Matthew Arnold was born on 24 December 1822 at Laleham, Middlesex, a village beside the Thames, and died suddenly on 15 April 1888 at Liverpool. He became one of the defining English voices of the Victorian age: a poet of haunting melancholy, a critic who sought standards of excellence amid cultural confusion, an educational civil servant with an unusually broad public vision, and a controversial commentator on relig…

“The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.”

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

In time

Gerald Massey
Matthew Arnold
1822 1907
They overlapped for 61 years (1828–1888). When Gerald Massey was born, Matthew Arnold was about 6. Gerald Massey was about 60 when Matthew Arnold died.

On the map

About 45 km separate Tring, Hertfordshire, England from Laleham, Middlesex, 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

class religious culture education social

Gerald Massey: tring, south norwood, william massey, rosina jane cross, babe christabel, poems and chansons, voices of freedom, lyrics of love. Matthew Arnold: laleham, rugby school, thomas arnold, frances lucy wightman, the forsaken merman, sohrab and rustum, the scholar-gipsy, empedocles on etna.

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.

Dirge
Gerald Massey
78% life
Compare
Youth and Calm
Matthew Arnold
Dirge
Gerald Massey
76% life
Compare
Youth's Agitations
Matthew Arnold
Dirge
Gerald Massey
74%
Compare
Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold
Dirge
Gerald Massey
74% life
Compare
Requiescat
Matthew Arnold
Song of the Red Republican
Gerald Massey
72%
Compare
Morality
Matthew Arnold
Song of the Red Republican
Gerald Massey
72%
Compare
The Last Word
Matthew Arnold

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Gerald Massey: Longing, Anger, Despair. Matthew Arnold: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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