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

John Banister Tabb John Banister Tabb

Poet B

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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 59% Blended 59%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Banister Tabb

John Banister Tabb

22 March 1845 – 19 November 1909 (~64)
1 live poem · English

In the world of American poetry, few figures embody such remarkable contrasts as John Banister Tabb (March 22, 1845 – November 19, 1909), a man whose life journey carried him from the battlefields of the Confederacy to the quiet halls of a Catholic seminary, from the drawing rooms of Virginia aristocracy to a prison cell where poetry first awakened in his soul. Known affectionately as "Father Tabb" throughout his lat…

“She is perhaps the best Catholic English writer, and Ruskin, whose life she wrote, calls her a great critic.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Tenderness
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

17 August 1840 – 10 September 1922 (~82)
9 live poems · English

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, born on 17 August 1840 at Petworth in Sussex and dead on 10 September 1922 at Newbuildings Place, his Sussex home, lived a life unusually crowded with contradiction. He was an English gentleman who became one of Victorian Britain’s most persistent critics of empire; a formal, often old-fashioned poet who sought to make verse answer political injustice; a diplomat who abandoned official service i…

“War will be unpopular enough in England soon if it goes on as at present, and there will be a chance then for the weak nations to remain unmolested.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

John Banister Tabb
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
1840 1922
They overlapped for 65 years (1845–1909). When John Banister Tabb was born, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was about 5. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was about 69 when John Banister Tabb died.

On the map

About 6,062 km separate Amelia County, Virginia, USA from Petworth House, Sussex, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

John Banister Tabb: the forest, father tabb, sidney lanier, catholic seminary, american civil war, blockade runner, point lookout, alfred curtis. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: petworth, newbuildings place, lady anne blunt, the bedouin tribes of the euphrates, a pilgrimage to nejd, crabbet park, arabian horse breeding, stonyhurst college.

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.

Clover
John Banister Tabb
67%
Compare
O fly not, Pleasure
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Clover
John Banister Tabb
66% world
Compare
He Laments that His Love is Dead
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Clover
John Banister Tabb
64%
Compare
He Has Fallen from the Height of His Love
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Clover
John Banister Tabb
64%
Compare
Love is Best
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Clover
John Banister Tabb
63%
Compare
The Grief of Love
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Clover
John Banister Tabb
61%
Compare
Brave as a falcon and as merciless
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Banister Tabb: Wonder, Longing, Tenderness. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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