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

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Poet B

George Eliot George Eliot
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 67% Poems 82% Blended 74%
Swap sides Another related pair
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851 (~54)
2 live poems · English

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on 30 August 1797 and dead on 1 February 1851, occupied an extraordinary position in British literary history from the beginning of her life. She was the daughter of two of the most provocative writers of the late eighteenth century: the political philosopher William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her name ha…

“We never do what we wish when we wish it, and when we desire a thing earnestly, and it does arrive, that or we are changed.”

Neighbourhood: Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
George Eliot

George Eliot

22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880 (~61)
2 live poems · English

George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, was born on 22 November 1819 at South Farm on the Arbury estate near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, England, and died in London on 22 December 1880. She became one of the defining writers of the Victorian age, though she reached that position by a route unusually difficult for a woman of her period. Novelist, translator, editor, critic, essayist, and poet, Eliot brought philos…

“Appeals founded on generalisations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
George Eliot
1797 1880
They overlapped for 33 years (1819–1851). When George Eliot was born, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was about 22. George Eliot was about 32 when Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley died.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in history George Eliot in history Years they were given

On the map

About 144 km separate Somers Town, London, England from Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Both have ground in London.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

George Eliot

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

love memory life

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley only

beloved dream psyche desire dreams star light grief

George Eliot only

world loneliness isolation lonely nature loss lovers children domestic couple spring parents

From the biographies

novel fiction social

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: frankenstein, villa diodati, percy bysshe shelley, william godwin, history of a six weeks' tour, romanticism, gothic fiction, lake geneva. George Eliot: nuneaton, middlemarch, adam bede, the mill on the floss, silas marner, george henry lewes, rosehill group, david friedrich strauss.

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.

Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
75% love
Compare
Two Lovers.
George Eliot
How like a star
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
75%
Compare
I Am Lonely
George Eliot
How like a star
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
75% memory, life
Compare
Two Lovers.
George Eliot
Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
73%
Compare
I Am Lonely
George Eliot

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1819 Byron Publishes Mazeppa and the First Two Cantos of Don Juan
1819 John Keats Writes 'To Autumn' Celebrating the Season's Winds
1819 Shelley Writes Ode to the West Wind
1823 Byron Joins the Greek War of Independence
1823 Publication of 'The Poems of Jeremiah Joseph Callanan'
1824 Lord Byron Arrives in Missolonghi to Lead the Greek Forces
1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

1805 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Education Begins
1815 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's First Child
1816 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Friendship with Lord Byron
1817 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Second Child
1823 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Return to England
1826 Publication of The Last Man
1831 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Literary Recognition
1849 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Final Years

George Eliot

1846 Translation of David Strauss's 'The Life of Jesus'
1857 Adoption of the Pen Name 'George Eliot'
1859 Publication of 'Adam Bede'
1871 Publication of 'Middlemarch'
1880 Marriage to John Cross

Emotional landscapes

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. George Eliot: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

Skip to main content