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

W. H. Davies W. H. Davies

Poet B

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson
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 67% Poems 91% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
W. H. Davies

W. H. Davies

3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940 (~69)
23 live poems · English

William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…

“If only one quarter of my readers had been buyers instead of borrowers, I would now be worth half a street, perhaps a castle, an island, or a full-masted ship.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing
Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894 (~44)
4 live poems · English

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, into a family whose public achievements seemed to prescribe his future long before he could choose one for himself. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a distinguished civil engineer and designer of lighthouses, heir to a formidable Scottish professional dynasty. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, came from another prominent family; her fat…

“Nothing is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Wonder

In time

W. H. Davies
Robert Louis Stevenson
1850 1940
They overlapped for 24 years (1871–1894). When W. H. Davies was born, Robert Louis Stevenson was about 21. W. H. Davies was about 23 when Robert Louis Stevenson died.

On the map

About 487 km separate Newport, Wales from Edinburgh, 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

W. H. Davies: newport, monmouthshire, the soul destroyer, leisure, george bernard shaw, edward thomas, super-tramp, the autobiography of a super-tramp. Robert Louis Stevenson: edinburgh, thomas stevenson, fanny van de grift osbourne, strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde, treasure island, the sea cook, an inland voyage, travels with a donkey in the cévennes.

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.

Love's Inspiration
W. H. Davies
81% love
Compare
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
Joy Supreme
W. H. Davies
80%
Compare
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
Life is Jolly
W. H. Davies
77% life, freedom
Compare
The Vagabond
Robert Louis Stevenson
Love's Caution
W. H. Davies
77% love
Compare
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
Days Too Short
W. H. Davies
77% world
Compare
Summer Sun
Robert Louis Stevenson
An Early Love
W. H. Davies
77% love
Compare
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

W. H. Davies: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing. Robert Louis Stevenson: Peace, Joy, Wonder.

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