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

Sir Aubrey de Vere Sir Aubrey de Vere

Poet B

Robert Southey Robert Southey
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 86% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir Aubrey de Vere

Sir Aubrey de Vere

28 August 1788 – 5 July 1846 (~58)
2 live poems · English

Sir Aubrey de Vere, born Aubrey Hunt on 28 August 1788 and dead on 5 July 1846, was an Irish poet, dramatist, landowner, magistrate, and baronet whose life joined literary aspiration to the duties and assumptions of the Anglo-Irish governing class. He is now frequently encountered as the father of the better-known poet Aubrey Thomas de Vere, and that relationship has sometimes obscured the elder man’s own achievement…

“I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Robert Southey

Robert Southey

12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843 (~69)
4 live poems · English

Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…

“There are three things which keep their appointed course, Time, Tide, & your father.”

Neighbourhood: Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder

In time

Sir Aubrey de Vere
Robert Southey
1774 1846
They overlapped for 56 years (1788–1843). When Sir Aubrey de Vere was born, Robert Southey was about 14. Sir Aubrey de Vere was about 55 when Robert Southey died.

On the map

About 447 km separate Curragh Chase, County Limerick, Ireland from Bristol, 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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

From the biographies

history religious

Sir Aubrey de Vere: curragh chase, county limerick, aubrey thomas de vere, william wordsworth, lord byron, mary spring rice, thomas spring rice, anglo-irish governing class. Robert Southey: bristol, greta hall, lake district, pantisocracy, edward fricker, samuel taylor coleridge, joan of arc, thalaba the destroyer.

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.

The Perversion of Letters
Sir Aubrey de Vere
76%
Compare
My days among the Dead are past
Robert Southey
The Perversion of Letters
Sir Aubrey de Vere
75%
Compare
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
The Children Band
Sir Aubrey de Vere
75% children, innocence
Compare
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
The Children Band
Sir Aubrey de Vere
69%
Compare
The Complaints of the Poor
Robert Southey
The Perversion of Letters
Sir Aubrey de Vere
69%
Compare
The Complaints of the Poor
Robert Southey
The Perversion of Letters
Sir Aubrey de Vere
68%
Compare
The Well of St. Keyne
Robert Southey

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Sir Aubrey de Vere: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Robert Southey: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder.

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