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

Alfred Douglas Alfred Douglas

Poet B

Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde
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 81% Poems 84% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alfred Douglas

Alfred Douglas

22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945 (~75)
3 live poems · English

Alfred Bruce Douglas was born on 22 October 1870 at Ham Hill House, near Powick in Worcestershire, into a family whose rank, wealth, volatility, and theatrical public reputation would shape his life almost as powerfully as his literary gifts. He was the third son of John Sholto Douglas, ninth Marquess of Queensberry, and Lady Sybil Montgomery, daughter of the first Baron of Abergavenny. The boy was known from childho…

“I decline to go on sticking to the convention which has hitherto forced me to suppress the truth.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Longing
Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900 (~46)
9 live poems · English

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on 16 October 1854 at 21 Westland Row in Dublin, Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom. He entered a household unusually rich in learning, performance, controversy, and public ambition. His father, Sir William Wilde, was an eminent surgeon specializing in diseases of the eye and ear, a respected medical writer, antiquarian, and collector of Irish folklore. His mother,…

“When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Irish Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow

In time

Alfred Douglas
Oscar Wilde
1854 1945
They overlapped for 31 years (1870–1900). When Alfred Douglas was born, Oscar Wilde was about 16. Alfred Douglas was about 30 when Oscar Wilde died.

On the map

About 297 km separate Ham Hill House, Worcestershire, England from Dublin, Ireland. 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

desire social

Alfred Douglas: ham hill house, oscar wilde, the chameleon, two loves, magdalen college, the spirit lamp, french symbolism, salomé. Oscar Wilde: speranza, requiescat, portora royal school, trinity college dublin, newdigate prize, poems, the picture of dorian gray, aestheticism.

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 Green River
Alfred Douglas
82% voice
Compare
Her Voice
Oscar Wilde
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
80%
Compare
Rose and Rue
Oscar Wilde
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
77%
Compare
Le Panneau
Oscar Wilde
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
74%
Compare
Ave Maria Gratia Plena
Oscar Wilde
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
74%
Compare
Les Ballons
Oscar Wilde
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
73%
Compare
To My Wife
Oscar Wilde

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Douglas: Irony, Sorrow, Longing. Oscar Wilde: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow.

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