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

Ernst Stadler Ernst Stadler

Poet B

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson
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 62% Poems 83% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ernst Stadler

Ernst Stadler

11 August 1883 – 30 October 1914 (~31)
2 live poems · German

Ernst Stadler was born on 11 August 1883 in Colmar, in Alsace, and was killed on 30 October 1914 near Zandvoorde in Flanders during the First World War. His life lasted little more than thirty-one years, and the body of poetry on which his reputation rests is correspondingly small. Yet his importance in German-language literature is out of proportion to its size. Stadler stands among the decisive early voices of Expr…

“To keep fixing the French spirit to a few catchwords such as rationalism, clarity, logic and measure is to hound a principle to death through lazy generalisation merely because it suited certain periods and individuals.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, German Romantics
Emotional landscape: Longing, Fear, Sensuality
Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894 (~44)
4 live poems · English

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, into a family whose public achievements seemed to prescribe his future long before he could choose one for himself. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a distinguished civil engineer and designer of lighthouses, heir to a formidable Scottish professional dynasty. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, came from another prominent family; her fat…

“To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Wonder

In time

Ernst Stadler
Robert Louis Stevenson
1850 1914
They overlapped for 12 years (1883–1894). When Ernst Stadler was born, Robert Louis Stevenson was about 33. Ernst Stadler was about 11 when Robert Louis Stevenson died.

On the map

About 1,132 km separate Colmar, Alsace, France from Edinburgh, Scotland. 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

Ernst Stadler: colmar, alsace, first world war, der aufbruch, expressionism, oxford, walt whitman, strasbourg. Robert Louis Stevenson: edinburgh, thomas stevenson, fanny van de grift osbourne, strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde, treasure island, the sea cook, an inland voyage, travels with a donkey in the cévennes.

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.

Lover's Seat
Ernst Stadler
75% death
Compare
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
Lover's Seat
Ernst Stadler
73% love
Compare
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
Der Aufbruch
Ernst Stadler
71% world, life
Compare
The Vagabond
Robert Louis Stevenson
Lover's Seat
Ernst Stadler
70%
Compare
Summer Sun
Robert Louis Stevenson
Lover's Seat
Ernst Stadler
69%
Compare
The Vagabond
Robert Louis Stevenson
Der Aufbruch
Ernst Stadler
68% death, life
Compare
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ernst Stadler: Longing, Fear, Sensuality. Robert Louis Stevenson: Peace, Joy, Wonder.

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