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

John Barbour John Barbour
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.

Somewhat related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 50% Blended 50%
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…

“In that part of the book of my memory before which there is little to read, there is a heading which says: Here begins a new life.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Italian Renaissance Poets, Medieval Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Tenderness, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Barbour

John Barbour

c. 1316 – 13 March 1395 (~79)
1 live poem · English

In the misty highlands and rolling lowlands of 14th-century Scotland, where the fierce winds carried tales of valor and the long shadow of English invasion still chilled the hearts of patriots, John Barbour stood as a beacon of literary innovation and national spirit. A churchman by vocation yet a storyteller by passion, Barbour crafted the first major work of literature in the Scots tongue, an epic that would ignite…

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Medieval Poets, Scottish Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Joy, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Dante Alighieri
John Barbour
1265 1395
They overlapped for 6 years (1316–1321). When John Barbour was born, Dante Alighieri was about 51. John Barbour was about 5 when Dante Alighieri died.
Dante Alighieri in history John Barbour in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,786 km separate Florence, Italy from Alford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Dante Alighieri

John Barbour

Open both on the History Atlas

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.

Dante Alighieri only

love beatrice divine grace beauty spiritual soul virtue presence

John Barbour only

freedom scottish noble liberty independence medieval philosophical

From the biographies

Dante Alighieri: florence, divine comedy, beatrice portinari, vita nuova, guido cavalcanti, black guelphs, white guelphs, de monarchia. John Barbour: 14th-century scotland, the brus, aberdeenshire, archdeacon of aberdeen, king david ii, robert ii, battle of bannockburn, scots tongue.

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
60%
Compare
Freedom
John Barbour

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1316 Election of Pope John XXII and the Avignon Papacy
1316 The Construction of the Cathedral of Florence
1316 The Rise of Vernacular Literature in France
1319 Development of the Astrolabe in Islamic Science
1319 The Spread of the Printing Press in Europe
1320 Contribution to Chronica Majora
1320 William of Ockham Develops Nominalism
1321 Dante Alighieri's Death

Dante Alighieri

1270 Dante Alighieri's Education Begins
1285 Dante Alighieri Marries Gemma Donati
1295 Dante Alighieri's Political Involvement
1302 Dante Alighieri's Exile from Florence
1304 Dante Alighieri Writes 'Convivio'
1306 Dante Alighieri Completes 'De Vulgari Eloquentia'
1318 Dante Alighieri's Return to Ravenna
1321 Dante Alighieri's Death

John Barbour

1325 John Barbour's Early Education
1357 Barbour's Appointment as Archdeacon of Aberdeen
1375 Completion of 'The Brus'
1380 Barbour's Patronage by the Earl of Moray
1385 Barbour's Involvement in Church Affairs
1390 Barbour's Final Years in Aberdeen
1390 Barbour's Recognition as a National Poet
1395 Barbour's Influence on Scottish Literature

Emotional landscapes

Dante Alighieri: Wonder, Tenderness, Longing. John Barbour: Longing, Joy, Wonder.

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