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

George Cabot Lodge George Cabot Lodge

Poet B

Ernest Dowson Ernest Dowson
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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 66% Poems 88% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
George Cabot Lodge

George Cabot Lodge

10 October 1873 – 21 August 1909 (~36)
3 live poems · English

The story of George Cabot Lodge is a story of two shadows: one cast by the immense, looming silhouette of a politically titanic father, and the other, the long, penumbral shadow of a premature and tragic end. Within the brief span of thirty-six years, Lodge crafted a body of work that was unapologetically intellectual, earnestly philosophical, and deeply romantic, seeking nothing less than to articulate the soul’s st…

“One makes oneself so very largely, and to make oneself greater or better, one must believe. Apply your religion: Thy faith has made thee whole! That's the most wonderful thing Christ ever said, and it applies everywhere in life. Believe in yourself!”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
Ernest Dowson

Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900 (~33)
18 live poems · English

In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to 1900—produced poetry of such delicate melancholy and exquisite craftsmanship that it continues to ca…

“£10 is a chimerical sum to me; but let us prepare our garland for the day, surely it must come, when this impecunious tyranny is overworn.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

George Cabot Lodge
Ernest Dowson
1867 1909
They overlapped for 28 years (1873–1900). When George Cabot Lodge was born, Ernest Dowson was about 6. George Cabot Lodge was about 27 when Ernest Dowson died.

On the map

About 5,352 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Canterbury, Kent, 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.

Shared

From the biographies

George Cabot Lodge: boston, nahant, william james, george santayana, the song of the wave, poems, the great adventure, cain. Ernest Dowson: lee, kent, rhymers' club, william butler yeats, adelaide foltinowicz, verses, non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno cynarae, vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam, decadent movement.

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.

The Final Word
George Cabot Lodge
81% love
Compare
Exchanges
Ernest Dowson
The Final Word
George Cabot Lodge
80% love, life
Compare
Vitae Summa Brevis
Ernest Dowson
The Final Word
George Cabot Lodge
80% love, life
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
Day and Dark
George Cabot Lodge
79% world, beauty
Compare
Chanson Sans Paroles
Ernest Dowson
The Final Word
George Cabot Lodge
78% love
Compare
To a Lost Love
Ernest Dowson
To Silence
George Cabot Lodge
78% life, death
Compare
In a Breton Cemetery
Ernest Dowson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

George Cabot Lodge: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness. Ernest Dowson: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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