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

A. A. Milne A. A. Milne

Poet B

W. H. Davies W. H. Davies
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% Poems 87% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
A. A. Milne

A. A. Milne

18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956 (~74)
67 live poems · English

Alan Alexander Milne was born in Kilburn, London, on 18 January 1882, into a household where education, discipline, and intellectual curiosity were daily realities. He was the youngest of three sons of John Vine Milne and Sarah Marie Heginbotham Milne. His father was the headmaster of Henley House School, a small independent school in Kilburn, and the school stood at the center of family life. The young Alan was educ…

“I gave up writing children's books. I wanted to escape from them as I had once wanted to escape from Punch: as I have always wanted to escape. In vain.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Tenderness
W. H. Davies

W. H. Davies

3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940 (~69)
23 live poems · English

William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…

“I want to see the books around me as my own property, else the sight of them grieves me.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing

In time

A. A. Milne
W. H. Davies
1871 1956
They overlapped for 59 years (1882–1940). When A. A. Milne was born, W. H. Davies was about 11. A. A. Milne was about 58 when W. H. Davies died.

On the map

About 193 km separate Hampstead, London, England from Newport, Wales. Both have ground in England.

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

social

A. A. Milne: kilburn, henley house school, h. g. wells, trinity college, granta, punch, winnie-the-pooh, christopher robin. W. H. Davies: newport, monmouthshire, the soul destroyer, leisure, george bernard shaw, edward thomas, super-tramp, the autobiography of a super-tramp.

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.

Spring Morning
A. A. Milne
82% world
Compare
Children at Play
W. H. Davies
Journey's End
A. A. Milne
80% childhood, world
Compare
Children at Play
W. H. Davies
At Home
A. A. Milne
79% childhood, world, imagination
Compare
Children at Play
W. H. Davies
Knights and Ladies
A. A. Milne
79% world
Compare
Children at Play
W. H. Davies
Sand-Between-the-Toes
A. A. Milne
79% world, childhood, children
Compare
Children at Play
W. H. Davies
Waiting At The Window
A. A. Milne
79% children
Compare
Children at Play
W. H. Davies

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

A. A. Milne: Joy, Wonder, Tenderness. W. H. Davies: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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