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

Paul Valéry Paul Valéry

Poet B

Manuel Machado Manuel Machado
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 65% Poems 78% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry

30 October 1871 – 20 July 1945 (~74)
3 live poems · French

In the autumn of 1871, as France was still reeling from the trauma of the Franco-Prussian War and the violent suppression of the Paris Commune, a child was born in the Mediterranean port town of Sète who would become one of the twentieth century's most formidable literary intellects. Ambroise Paul Toussaint Jules Valéry entered the world on October 30th, in a region where the brilliant southern light seemed to sharpe…

“Everything you say speaks about you, especially when you speak about someone else.”

Neighbourhood: French Symbolists, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Manuel Machado

Manuel Machado

29 August 1874 – 19 January 1947 (~73)
4 live poems · Spanish

Manuel Machado was born on August 29, 1874, in the heart of Seville, Spain, at number 20 on San Pedro Mártir Street, into a household that pulsed with the rhythms of Andalusian folklore and intellectual curiosity. His arrival came at two-thirty in the morning, under the warm embrace of a city where orange blossoms scented the air and the distant echo of guitars hinted at the deep songs that would later infuse his poe…

“La poesía es el arte de hacer versos.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Paul Valéry
Manuel Machado
1871 1947
They overlapped for 72 years (1874–1945). When Manuel Machado was born, Paul Valéry was about 3. Manuel Machado was about 71 when Paul Valéry died.
Paul Valéry in history Manuel Machado in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,057 km separate Sète, Occitanie, France from Seville, Spain. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Paul Valéry

Manuel Machado

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.

Shared

self love desire beauty

Paul Valéry only

consciousness sting pain sensation dream source inspiration silence poésie spinner garden blue

Manuel Machado only

spanish virgin sonnet faith heart name devotion landscape adelfos identity life flamenco

From the biographies

Paul Valéry: sète, franco-prussian war, paris commune, symbolist movement, stéphane mallarmé, la jeune parque, le cimetière marin, charmes. Manuel Machado: seville, andalusian folklore, antonio machado álvarez, demófilo, generation of '98, paris, paul verlaine, alma.

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.

Poésie
Paul Valéry
76% self
Compare
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
La Fileuse
Paul Valéry
71% beauty
Compare
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
L'Abeille
Paul Valéry
70% love, desire, self
Compare
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
Poésie
Paul Valéry
68%
Compare
¡Viva la Virgen del Rocío!
Manuel Machado
Poésie
Paul Valéry
66%
Compare
La caseta de feria
Manuel Machado
Poésie
Paul Valéry
66%
Compare
Sevillanas
Manuel Machado

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'

Paul Valéry

1890 Valéry meets Pierre Louÿs and André Gide
1891 Valéry enters Mallarmé's literary circle
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks
1894 Valéry moves permanently to Paris
1917 Valéry's First Major Publication
1922 Valéry publishes Charmes
1937 Valéry becomes Professor of Poetics at the Collège de France

Manuel Machado

1883 Education at Institución Libre de Enseñanza
1901 First Published Work
1909 Marriage to Concha Méndez
1911 Publication of 'El poema de los pueblos'
1930 Publication of 'Cuentos de la vida de un poeta'
1936 Exile during Spanish Civil War
1939 Return to Spain after Exile
1940 Final Years and Literary Legacy

Emotional landscapes

Paul Valéry: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. Manuel Machado: Joy, Sensuality, Longing.

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