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

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy

Poet B

Robert Browning Robert 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 92% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928 (~88)
41 live poems · English

Thomas Hardy stands as one of the most significant literary figures of the Victorian and early modern periods, a writer whose novels explored the tragic dimensions of human experience with unflinching honesty and whose poetry achieved a stark beauty that influenced generations of twentieth-century poets. Born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England, and dying on January 11, 1928, in Max Gate, Dorchest…

“Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Robert Browning

Robert Browning

7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889 (~77)
19 live poems · English

Robert Browning was born on 7 May 1812 at Southampton Cottage, Camberwell, then a semi-rural district south of London, and died on 12 December 1889 in Venice. Few English poets have combined such audacity of intellect, dramatic energy, moral curiosity, and technical resourcefulness. During his lifetime he moved from the position of a puzzling, frequently mocked young writer to that of a revered elder of Victorian let…

“I have no pleasure in writing myself—none, in the mere act—though all pleasure in the sense of fulfilling a duty.”

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

In time

Thomas Hardy
Robert Browning
1812 1928
They overlapped for 50 years (1840–1889). When Thomas Hardy was born, Robert Browning was about 28. Thomas Hardy was about 49 when Robert Browning died.

On the map

About 182 km separate Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England from Camberwell, London, 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

Thomas Hardy: higher bockhampton, dorset, egdon heath, emma lavinia gifford, far from the madding crowd, the return of the native, the mayor of casterbridge, tess of the d'urbervilles. Robert Browning: southampton cottage, venice, dramatic monologue, elizabeth barrett browning, pauline: a fragment of a confession, my last duchess, porphyria's lover, pippa passes.

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.

To Lizbie Browne
Thomas Hardy
86% woman
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
At An Inn
Thomas Hardy
84% love
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
Four Footprints
Thomas Hardy
83% woman, love
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
The Voice
Thomas Hardy
83% woman
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
Shut Out that Moon
Thomas Hardy
83%
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
The Phantom
Thomas Hardy
83% woman
Compare
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Hardy: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Robert Browning: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder.

Compare their emotional landscapes
Skip to main content