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

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri

Poet B

Giacomo Leopardi Giacomo Leopardi
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 63% Blended 63%
Swap sides Another related pair
Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri

c. May 1265 – 14 September 1321 (~56)
1 live poem · Italian

In the spring of 1265, beneath the shadow of Florence's rising towers, a child was born who would revolutionize not merely Italian literature but the entire Western imagination. Dante Alighieri entered a world of political turmoil, theological ferment, and artistic flowering, and he would spend his fifty-six years transforming personal anguish into universal art, political exile into cosmic vision, and earthly love i…

“The purpose of the whole work is to remove those living in this life from a state of misery and to lead them to a state of happiness.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Italian Renaissance Poets, Medieval Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Tenderness, Longing
Giacomo Leopardi

Giacomo Leopardi

29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837 (~39)
2 live poems · Italian

Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, in the Marches, then part of the Papal States, on 29 June 1798, and died in Naples on 14 June 1837, only weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. His short life produced one of the most searching bodies of poetry and prose in modern European literature. He is often introduced as Italy’s supreme poet of pessimism, and there is truth in the description, but it is insufficient if it…

“The poet does not imitate nature; rather, nature speaks within him and through his mouth.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality

In time

Dante Alighieri
Giacomo Leopardi
1265 1837
Their lives did not overlap. 477 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 189 km separate Florence, Italy from Recanati, Marche, Italy. Shared ground: Italy.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

From the biographies

Dante Alighieri: florence, divine comedy, beatrice portinari, vita nuova, guido cavalcanti, black guelphs, white guelphs, de monarchia. Giacomo Leopardi: recanati, naples, count monaldo leopardi, adelaide antici, l'infinito, alla luna, operette morali, zibaldone di pensieri.

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.

Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare
Dante Alighieri
71%
Compare
A Se Stesso
Giacomo Leopardi
Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare
Dante Alighieri
68%
Compare
The Infinite
Giacomo Leopardi

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

Dante Alighieri: Wonder, Tenderness, Longing. Giacomo Leopardi: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality.

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