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

John Gillespie Magee Jr. John Gillespie Magee Jr.

Poet B

John Masefield John Masefield
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
John Gillespie Magee Jr.

John Gillespie Magee Jr.

9 June 1922 – 11 December 1941 (~19)
1 live poem · English

John Gillespie Magee Jr., born in Shanghai, China, on 9 June 1922 and killed over Lincolnshire, England, on 11 December 1941, occupies an unusual and enduring place in twentieth-century literature. He is remembered above all for “High Flight,” the fourteen-line poem that begins, “Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth,” and ends with one of the most quoted conclusions in English poetry: “Put out my hand, and tou…

“It is called High Flight and was inspired by a flight I made a few days ago.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Georgian Poets, Hymn Writers
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Spirituality
John Masefield

John Masefield

1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967 (~89)
8 live poems · English

John Edward Masefield was born on 1 June 1878 in Ledbury, Herefordshire, a market town on the borderlands of England and Wales, and died on 12 May 1967 at Abingdon, then in Berkshire. During his long life he became one of Britain’s most recognizable poets: a writer of sailors, fields, foxhunts, village sinners, mythic heroes, children’s dreams, national ceremonies, and private grief. He was also a novelist, playwrigh…

“The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder

In time

John Gillespie Magee Jr.
John Masefield
1878 1967
They overlapped for 20 years (1922–1941). When John Gillespie Magee Jr. was born, John Masefield was about 44. John Masefield was about 63 when John Gillespie Magee Jr. died.

On the map

About 9,271 km separate Shanghai, China from Ledbury, Herefordshire, England. Both have ground in England.

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

John Gillespie Magee Jr.: shanghai, high flight, royal canadian air force, rugby school, rupert brooke, canadian air force, supermarine spitfire, sonnet to rupert brooke. John Masefield: ledbury, herefordshire, hms conway, salt-water ballads, sea fever, the everlasting mercy, constance de la cherois crommelin, the tragedy of pompey the great.

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.

High Flight
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
72%
Compare
Cargoes
John Masefield
High Flight
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
70% world
Compare
Sea-Fever
John Masefield
High Flight
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
70% world
Compare
Prayer
John Masefield
High Flight
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
69% world
Compare
The West Wind
John Masefield
High Flight
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
69%
Compare
When Bony Death
John Masefield
High Flight
John Gillespie Magee Jr.
67% world
Compare
Twilight
John Masefield

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Gillespie Magee Jr.: Joy, Wonder, Spirituality. John Masefield: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

Skip to main content