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

T. Sturge Moore T. Sturge Moore

Poet B

Marianne Moore Marianne Moore
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 76% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
T. Sturge Moore

T. Sturge Moore

4 March 1870 – 18 July 1944 (~74)
1 live poem · English

Thomas Sturge Moore, born on 4 March 1870 at Hastings, Sussex, and dead on 18 July 1944 at Windsor, was one of the most distinctive English poet-artists of his generation: a writer of symbolist and classical verse, a critic of painting and artistic purpose, a wood engraver, and an accomplished designer of books. He belonged to that transitional company whose work joined the late Victorian devotion to beauty, craftsma…

“The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore

15 November 1887 – 5 February 1972 (~85)
2 live poems · English

Marianne Craig Moore emerged from the American Modernist movement as one of its most distinctive and enigmatic voices, a poet whose meticulous attention to detail and refusal to conform to conventional poetic forms revolutionized twentieth-century verse. Born on November 15, 1887, in Kirkwood, Missouri, and passing away on February 5, 1972, in New York City, Moore lived through nearly the entire span of modern Americ…

“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

T. Sturge Moore
Marianne Moore
1870 1972
They overlapped for 58 years (1887–1944). When Marianne Moore was born, T. Sturge Moore was about 17. Marianne Moore was about 57 when T. Sturge Moore died.
T. Sturge Moore in history Marianne Moore in history Years they were given

On the map

About 6,853 km separate 3 Wellington Square, Hastings, East Sussex from Kirkwood, Missouri, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

T. Sturge Moore

Marianne Moore

Open both on the History Atlas

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

beauty

T. Sturge Moore only

swan love pain dying suffering death

Marianne Moore only

cliff fish world philosophical endurance resilience snail style principle verbal

From the biographies

T. Sturge Moore: hastings, windsor, george edward moore, the vinedresser and other poems, the centaur’s booty, the rout of the amazons, classical verse, pre-raphaelites. Marianne Moore: kirkwood missouri, new york city, h.d., bryn mawr college, observations, the fish, the pangolin, poetry.

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 Dying Swan
T. Sturge Moore
75% beauty
Compare
The Fish
Marianne Moore
The Dying Swan
T. Sturge Moore
69%
Compare
To a Snail
Marianne Moore

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks

T. Sturge Moore

1881 Education at Dulwich College
1888 Artistic Training at Lambeth School of Art
1899 Publication of 'The Vinedresser and Other Poems'
1900 Friendship with W.B. Yeats
1903 Marriage to Mary Sturge Moore
1910 Publication of 'The Poet's Craft'
1920 Publication of 'The Green Book'
1940 Final Years in Hastings

Marianne Moore

1915 First Published Poem
1918 Move to New York City
1924 Publication of 'Observations'
1936 Publication of 'The Pangolin'
1952 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize
1967 Publication of 'The Complete Poems'

Emotional landscapes

T. Sturge Moore: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing. Marianne Moore: Wonder, Peace, Sorrow.

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