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

T. E. Brown T. E. Brown

Poet B

Arthur Hugh Clough Arthur Hugh Clough
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 71% Poems 88% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
T. E. Brown

T. E. Brown

5 May 1830 – 29 October 1897 (~67)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Victorian literature, Thomas Edward Brown occupies a unique position—a poet who straddled two worlds with remarkable grace and authenticity. Born on the Isle of Man in 1830 and dying there in 1897, Brown spent his life navigating between the intimate, Celtic traditions of his homeland and the broader currents of English literary culture. His poetry, written primarily in the Manx dialect, captured t…

“I grow old naturally, comfortably, easily, and with assent and consent. It is the strugglers, the rebels, the miserables who can do nothing generously, that spoil themselves.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Scottish Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
Arthur Hugh Clough

Arthur Hugh Clough

1 January 1819 – 13 November 1861 (~42)
12 live poems · English

Arthur Hugh Clough, born in Liverpool on 1 January 1819 and dead in Florence on 13 November 1861, occupies an unusual and compelling place in nineteenth-century English poetry. He was a Victorian poet, but he often sounds impatient with the assurances conventionally associated with Victorian verse: confidence in progress, confidence in religious doctrine, confidence in moral formulas, and confidence that elevated poe…

“A bad style is as bad as bad manners, and manners you admit do mean something. Things really ill-written it does one a little harm to read.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

T. E. Brown
Arthur Hugh Clough
1819 1897
They overlapped for 32 years (1830–1861). When T. E. Brown was born, Arthur Hugh Clough was about 11. T. E. Brown was about 31 when Arthur Hugh Clough died.
T. E. Brown in history Arthur Hugh Clough in history Years they were given

On the map

About 133 km separate Douglas, Isle of Man from Liverpool, England.

T. E. Brown

Arthur Hugh Clough

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

life self

T. E. Brown only

divine return mother stream stillness leap hills embrace source dhoon nature motion

Arthur Hugh Clough only

social hope faith wind separation religious duty doubt struggle light smoke waves

From the biographies

T. E. Brown: isle of man, manx dialect, robert brown, dorothy thompson brown, betsy lee, fo'c's'le yarns, the doctor and other poems, old john and other poems. Arthur Hugh Clough: liverpool, florence, charleston, thomas arnold, matthew arnold, oxford movement, amours de voyage, the bothie of tober-na-vuolich.

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.

Life
T. E. Brown
81% life, self
Compare
Shall I decide it by a random shot?
Arthur Hugh Clough
Life
T. E. Brown
80% life
Compare
The Questioning Spirit
Arthur Hugh Clough
Life
T. E. Brown
79%
Compare
Say not the Struggle Nought Availeth
Arthur Hugh Clough
Life
T. E. Brown
77% self
Compare
There Is No God
Arthur Hugh Clough
Life
T. E. Brown
77% self
Compare
A Protest
Arthur Hugh Clough
The Dhoon
T. E. Brown
76% stream
Compare
The Stream of Life
Arthur Hugh Clough

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction in London
1831 HMS Beagle Begins Darwin's Survey Voyage
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction
1831 Publication of 'Canti'
1833 The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire
1834 Publication of 'Philip van Artevelde'
1836 Publication of 'Nature'

T. E. Brown

1849 Education at St. John's College, Cambridge
1855 Ordination as a Methodist Minister
1865 Publication of 'The Manxman'
1875 Relocation to Liverpool for Teaching
1880 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of T. E. Brown'
1880 Return to the Isle of Man
1884 Publication of 'The Last of the Old School'
1897 Final Years and Legacy

Arthur Hugh Clough

1828 Clough's Return to England
1828 Education at Rugby School
1837 Matriculation at Balliol College
1840 Crisis of Faith
1847 Publication of 'The Latest Decalogue'
1848 Publication of 'The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich'
1848 Resignation from Oriel College Fellowship
1848 Travel to Paris and Rome

Emotional landscapes

T. E. Brown: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder. Arthur Hugh Clough: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.

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