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

Anne Whitney Anne Whitney

Poet B

William Blake William Blake
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 47% Poems 81% Blended 63%
Swap sides Another related pair
Anne Whitney

Anne Whitney

2 September 1821 – 23 January 1915 (~94)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of 19th-century American artists, few figures embody the spirit of creative rebellion and social conscience as powerfully as Anne Whitney. Born into an era when women were expected to confine their artistic pursuits to watercolors and embroidery, Whitney defied convention to become one of America's most accomplished sculptors and a significant voice in poetry. Her ninety-four years spanned a transform…

“The vast difference between working here and at home is at once manifest in the abundance with which the necessities of study present themselves to you without any wearisome search.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Irony
William Blake

William Blake

28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827 (~70)
35 live poems · English

William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street, Soho, London, into a city that was becoming the commercial, imperial, and intellectual center of Britain. He died seventy years later, on 12 August 1827, in a modest room south of the Thames, leaving behind work that had attracted only a small and sometimes bewildered audience during his lifetime. Yet Blake would eventually be recognized as one of the mos…

“Opposition is true Friendship.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality

In time

Anne Whitney
William Blake
1757 1915
They overlapped for 7 years (1821–1827). When Anne Whitney was born, William Blake was about 64. Anne Whitney was about 6 when William Blake died.

On the map

About 5,272 km separate Watertown, Massachusetts, USA from London, 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

Anne Whitney: watertown, massachusetts, james monroe, civil war, abolition, women's rights, the lone parting, equinoxial, ethiopia. William Blake: soho, london, catherine boucher, poetical sketches, songs of innocence, songs of experience, the marriage of heaven and hell, the tyger.

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.

Half Awake
Anne Whitney
75% dream
Compare
The Chimney-Sweeper
William Blake
Half Awake
Anne Whitney
75% dream
Compare
A Dream
William Blake
Half Awake
Anne Whitney
75%
Compare
Songs of Experience Introduction
William Blake
Half Awake
Anne Whitney
74% life
Compare
Auguries of Innocence
William Blake
The Passion Flower
Anne Whitney
74%
Compare
The Blossom
William Blake
The Passion Flower
Anne Whitney
72% divine, love
Compare
The Divine Image
William Blake

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Anne Whitney: Sorrow, Spirituality, Irony. William Blake: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality.

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