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 Ernest Henley William Ernest Henley
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 64% Poems 86% Blended 74%
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…

“At least believe that you are not yet sufficiently important to be taken too seriously by the Powers above us or beneath us.”

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

William Ernest Henley

23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903 (~54)
8 live poems · English

William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and died on 11 July 1903 at Woking, Surrey. He occupies an unusual place in English literary history: widely remembered by the public for a single short poem, “Invictus,” yet far more consequential in his own age as a poet, editor, critic, journalist, dramatist, and formidable presence in literary society. Henley’s life was shaped by physical pa…

“There are times and seasons when a good laugh makes more for edification than whole folios of good counsel.”

Neighbourhood: Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

Rudyard Kipling
William Ernest Henley
1849 1936
They overlapped for 39 years (1865–1903). When Rudyard Kipling was born, William Ernest Henley was about 16. Rudyard Kipling was about 38 when William Ernest Henley died.

On the map

About 7,339 km separate Mumbai, Maharashtra, India from Gloucester, England. 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 Ernest Henley: gloucester, woking, invictus, thomas edward brown, joseph lister, in hospital sequence, anna boyle, margaret emma henley.

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 Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling
80%
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
If-
Rudyard Kipling
77% face, self, resilience
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
The Widow at Windsor
Rudyard Kipling
77%
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
Troopin'
Rudyard Kipling
77%
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
Gentlemen-Rankers
Rudyard Kipling
77% self
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
An Astrologer's Song
Rudyard Kipling
76%
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley

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 Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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