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

Laurence Binyon Laurence Binyon

Poet B

Alfred Noyes Alfred Noyes
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 80% Poems 85% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Laurence Binyon

Laurence Binyon

10 August 1869 – 10 March 1943 (~74)
3 live poems · English

Laurence Binyon was born in Lancaster, England, on 10 August 1869, and died in Reading on 10 March 1943. During his lifetime he occupied an unusual and influential place in British cultural life: he was a poet, dramatist, translator, art historian, museum curator, critic, and lecturer. Yet public memory has narrowed him, often understandably, to the author of “For the Fallen,” the 1914 poem whose most famous stanza h…

“In the dance the body becomes a work of art, a plastic idea, infinitely expressive of emotion and of thought.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Peace
Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes

16 September 1880 – 25 June 1958 (~78)
2 live poems · English

Alfred Noyes was born on 16 September 1880 in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, and died on 25 June 1958 at his home on the Isle of Wight. During the first decades of the twentieth century he was among the best-known English poets in the world: a writer whose books sold widely, whose recitations drew large audiences, and whose poems entered schools, anthologies, music halls, and family memory. He was celebrated above all…

“The old definition of poetry as emotion remembered in tranquillity is true, and just now it is especially true.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness

In time

Laurence Binyon
Alfred Noyes
1869 1958
They overlapped for 64 years (1880–1943). When Alfred Noyes was born, Laurence Binyon was about 11. Alfred Noyes was about 63 when Laurence Binyon died.

On the map

About 174 km separate Lancaster, England from Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, 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

Laurence Binyon: lancaster, for the fallen, cicely margaret powell, the times, british museum, trinity college, painting in the far east, the flight of the dragon. Alfred Noyes: wolverhampton, isle of wight, the highwayman, garnett daniels, forty singing seamen, drake: an english epic, watchers of the sky, exeter college.

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.

O Summer sun
Laurence Binyon
79% world
Compare
Apes and Ivory
Alfred Noyes
For the Fallen
Laurence Binyon
75% death
Compare
The Highwayman
Alfred Noyes
The House That Was
Laurence Binyon
74% world
Compare
Apes and Ivory
Alfred Noyes
For the Fallen
Laurence Binyon
69%
Compare
Apes and Ivory
Alfred Noyes
O Summer sun
Laurence Binyon
68% world
Compare
The Highwayman
Alfred Noyes
The House That Was
Laurence Binyon
67% world
Compare
The Highwayman
Alfred Noyes

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Laurence Binyon: Wonder, Longing, Peace. Alfred Noyes: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness.

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