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

Edwin J. Ellis Edwin J. Ellis

Poet B

Laurence Binyon Laurence Binyon
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 75% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Edwin J. Ellis

Edwin J. Ellis

20 May 1848 – 1916 (~68)
1 live poem · English

Edwin John Ellis, born in London on 20 May 1848 and dead in 1916, belongs to that large but consequential company of late-Victorian writers whose names have faded while the movements, friendships, and acts of interpretation in which they participated remain central to literary history. He was a poet, painter, critic, editor, and imaginative theorist: a figure drawn to symbolism, myth, spiritual aspiration, and the af…

Neighbourhood: Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Tenderness
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…

“Personality, in the Chinese view of art, counts enormously.”

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

In time

Edwin J. Ellis
Laurence Binyon
1848 1943
They overlapped for 48 years (1869–1916). When Laurence Binyon was born, Edwin J. Ellis was about 21. Laurence Binyon was about 47 when Edwin J. Ellis died.

On the map

About 335 km separate London, England from Lancaster, 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.

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

From the biographies

Edwin J. Ellis: london, w. b. yeats, william blake, the works of william blake, seen in three days, fate in arcadia, pre-raphaelite movement, celtic revival. 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.

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.

Venus
Edwin J. Ellis
69%
Compare
O Summer sun
Laurence Binyon
Venus
Edwin J. Ellis
66%
Compare
For the Fallen
Laurence Binyon
Venus
Edwin J. Ellis
64%
Compare
The House That Was
Laurence Binyon

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Edwin J. Ellis: Spirituality, Wonder, Tenderness. Laurence Binyon: Wonder, Longing, Peace.

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