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

William Sharp William Sharp
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 55% Poems 73% Blended 63%
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…

“What each generation forgets is that while the words which it uses to describe ideas are always changing, the ideas themselves do not change so quickly.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Longing
William Sharp

William Sharp

12 September 1855 – 12 December 1905 (~50)
3 live poems · English

William Sharp was born on 12 September 1855 in Paisley, Renfrewshire, at a time when Scotland’s industrial towns were expanding rapidly but remained surrounded, in memory and imagination, by older rural worlds. He would become one of the most energetic and versatile literary figures of the late Victorian period: a poet, critic, biographer, editor, translator, anthologist, travel writer, and cultural interpreter. Yet…

“Too much of the book is born out of the incurable heartache, the nostalgia for impossible things.”

Neighbourhood: Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Scottish Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Peace

In time

Rudyard Kipling
William Sharp
1855 1936
They overlapped for 41 years (1865–1905). When Rudyard Kipling was born, William Sharp was about 10. Rudyard Kipling was about 40 when William Sharp died.

On the map

About 7,477 km separate Mumbai, Maharashtra, India from Paisley, Scotland. 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. William Sharp: paisley, fiona macleod, dante gabriel rossetti, sospiri di roma, earth's voices, late victorian, celtic revival, aestheticism.

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.

An Astrologer's Song
Rudyard Kipling
69%
Compare
Fireflies
William Sharp
An Astrologer's Song
Rudyard Kipling
66%
Compare
The Wasp
William Sharp
Christmas in India
Rudyard Kipling
65%
Compare
The White Peacock
William Sharp
Christmas in India
Rudyard Kipling
64%
Compare
Fireflies
William Sharp
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling
64% light
Compare
Fireflies
William Sharp
Fuzzy-Wuzzy
Rudyard Kipling
64%
Compare
The Wasp
William Sharp

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Rudyard Kipling: Irony, Sorrow, Longing. William Sharp: Wonder, Joy, Peace.

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