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

Isaac Rosenberg Isaac Rosenberg

Poet B

W. H. Davies W. H. Davies
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 74% Poems 86% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg

25 November 1890 – 1 April 1918 (~28)
4 live poems · English

Isaac Rosenberg was born in Bristol on 25 November 1890 and killed in France on 1 April 1918, at the age of twenty-seven. His brief life has come to seem almost emblematic of a generation interrupted by the First World War, yet his achievement cannot be understood merely as the achievement of a “war poet.” Rosenberg was also a painter, draughtsman, reader, self-educator, son of Jewish immigrants, East End Londoner, a…

“I am determined that my poetry shall have the same primitive power as a painting.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Georgian Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Fear
W. H. Davies

W. H. Davies

3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940 (~69)
23 live poems · English

William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…

“When I suffered most from lack of rest, or bodily sustenance—as my actual experience became darker, the thoughts of the future became brighter, as the stars shine to correspond with the night's shade.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing

In time

Isaac Rosenberg
W. H. Davies
1871 1940
They overlapped for 29 years (1890–1918). When Isaac Rosenberg was born, W. H. Davies was about 19. W. H. Davies was about 47 when Isaac Rosenberg died.

On the map

About 29 km separate Bristol, England from Newport, Wales. 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.

Shared

From the biographies

Isaac Rosenberg: bristol, first world war, jewish immigrants, east end london, stepney, whitechapel, night and day, break of day in the trenches. W. H. Davies: newport, monmouthshire, the soul destroyer, leisure, george bernard shaw, edward thomas, super-tramp, the autobiography of a super-tramp.

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 Female God
Isaac Rosenberg
76% beloved
Compare
Joy Supreme
W. H. Davies
Significance
Isaac Rosenberg
75% life
Compare
Strong Moments
W. H. Davies
Significance
Isaac Rosenberg
75% world, life
Compare
Days Too Short
W. H. Davies
The Female God
Isaac Rosenberg
74% beloved
Compare
Love's Inspiration
W. H. Davies
Significance
Isaac Rosenberg
74% world
Compare
The Captive Lion
W. H. Davies
Significance
Isaac Rosenberg
74%
Compare
Love's Inspiration
W. H. Davies

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Isaac Rosenberg: Sorrow, Despair, Fear. W. H. Davies: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing.

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