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

Max Ehrmann Max Ehrmann

Poet B

Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne
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 58% Poems 81% Blended 68%
Swap sides Another related pair
Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann

26 September 1872 – 9 September 1945 (~73)
2 live poems · English

Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…

“Religion is the bread of the soul. The best Christianity of today has abandoned the metaphysics of the Bible, but clings to the ethical teachings of Jesus—love, brotherhood, and service—which are the hope of the world.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace
Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne

5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909 (~72)
14 live poems · English

Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on 5 April 1837 at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, into a family whose rank, traditions, and geography would all enter his imagination. He was the eldest surviving child of Captain, later Admiral, Charles Henry Swinburne and Lady Jane Henrietta Ashburnham, daughter of the third Earl of Ashburnham. His inheritance was aristocratic, military, and literary. The Swinburnes p…

“Every master of pathos has a key of his own to unlock the source of tears, or of that passionate and piteous pleasure which lies above and under the region of tears.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Dramatic Poets, Political Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Max Ehrmann
Algernon Charles Swinburne
1837 1945
They overlapped for 38 years (1872–1909). When Max Ehrmann was born, Algernon Charles Swinburne was about 35. Max Ehrmann was about 37 when Algernon Charles Swinburne died.

On the map

About 6,521 km separate Terre Haute, Indiana, USA from Grosvenor Place, London, England. 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

Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius. Algernon Charles Swinburne: london, isle of wight, northumberland, captain charles henry swinburne, lady jane henrietta ashburnham, atalanta in calydon, poems and ballads, percy bysshe shelley.

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.

I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
77% love
Compare
A Leave-Taking
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
77% love
Compare
Love laid his sleepless head
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
73% love
Compare
In Time of Mourning
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
73% self
Compare
By Twilight
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
73% world, love
Compare
Before Sunset
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
72% love
Compare
The Sundew
Algernon Charles Swinburne

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Max Ehrmann: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace. Algernon Charles Swinburne: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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