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

Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling

Poet B

Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas
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% Poems 81% Blended 69%
Swap sides Another related pair
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936 (~71)
17 live poems · English

Rudyard Kipling was born Joseph Rudyard Kipling on December 30, 1865, in the bustling colonial port of Bombay, British India, a city that would forever pulse through his veins like the monsoon rains and the clamor of its streets. He died on January 18, 1936, in London, England, at the age of seventy, his body laid to rest in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey after a life that spanned the height of the British Empire…

“There is no abiding defeat in Art.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Longing
Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953 (~39)
94 live poems · English

Dylan Marlais Thomas stands as one of the most distinctive and influential voices in modern poetry, a writer whose work blazed with lyrical intensity and whose life burned with equal fervor. Born into the Welsh landscape that would forever shape his imagination, Thomas created a body of work that transcended national boundaries while remaining deeply rooted in the rhythms and imagery of his homeland. His poetry, char…

“In the shape of a boy, and a funny boy at that, I have only a very short time to learn how mad and marvellous it is.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality

In time

Rudyard Kipling
Dylan Thomas
1865 1953
They overlapped for 23 years (1914–1936). When Dylan Thomas was born, Rudyard Kipling was about 49. Dylan Thomas was about 22 when Rudyard Kipling died.

On the map

About 7,457 km separate Mumbai, Maharashtra, India from Swansea, Wales. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

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

Rudyard Kipling: bombay, westminster abbey, the jungle book, just so stories, kim, gunga din, the light that failed, caroline balestier. Dylan Thomas: swansea, caitlin macnamara, 18 poems, do not go gentle into that good night, under milk wood, gwilym marles, south wales, bbc broadcaster.

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.

Mary, Pity Women!
Rudyard Kipling
74% woman
Compare
The Woman Speaks
Dylan Thomas
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling
74%
Compare
Out of the sighs
Dylan Thomas
The Explanation
Rudyard Kipling
74% death, love, life
Compare
Youth Calls to Age
Dylan Thomas
The Explanation
Rudyard Kipling
73% death, love
Compare
And death shall have no dominion
Dylan Thomas

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Rudyard Kipling: Irony, Sorrow, Longing. Dylan Thomas: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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