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

E. Nesbit E. Nesbit

Poet B

Alice Meynell Alice Meynell
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 71% Poems 87% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
E. Nesbit

E. Nesbit

15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924 (~66)
4 live poems · English

Edith Nesbit, who published most often as E. Nesbit, was born on 15 August 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane in Kennington, then part of Surrey and now within south London. She died on 4 May 1924 at New Romney, Kent. In the years between those dates she became one of the most inventive writers for children in English, an accomplished poet, a novelist of adult life, a writer of ghost stories and social comedy, a social…

“And one need not always "talk down" to children: they understand far better than you think.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell

11 October 1847 – 27 November 1922 (~75)
3 live poems · English

Alice Meynell, born Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson on 11 October 1847 and dead on 27 November 1922, was one of the most distinctive English writers to work across the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. A poet of exquisite compression, an essayist of alert and sensuous intelligence, a critic, editor, Catholic public intellectual, and campaigner for women’s suffrage, she made a literary identity that cannot be r…

“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

E. Nesbit
Alice Meynell
1847 1924
They overlapped for 65 years (1858–1922). When E. Nesbit was born, Alice Meynell was about 11. E. Nesbit was about 64 when Alice Meynell died.
E. Nesbit in history Alice Meynell in history Years they were given

On the map

About 16 km separate Kennington, Surrey, England from Barnes, London, England. Both have ground in England and Kent.

E. Nesbit

Alice Meynell

Open both on the History Atlas

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

love beloved

E. Nesbit only

desire world death woman devotion wife ages suffering passion romantic hour gods

Alice Meynell only

thrush bird listener sound gardens garden heart birds self silence life music

From the biographies

E. Nesbit: kennington, new romney, hubert bland, the railway children, five children and it, the story of the treasure seekers, fabian society, songs of love and empire. Alice Meynell: edwardian, wilfrid meynell, preludes, renouncement, catholicism, francis thompson, the colour of life, the lady poverty.

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 Suicide
E. Nesbit
78% love, beloved
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
The Monk
E. Nesbit
77% life
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
Love's Suicide
E. Nesbit
77% love
Compare
My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell
The Monk
E. Nesbit
77%
Compare
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
The Wife of All Ages
E. Nesbit
76% love
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
The Wife of All Ages
E. Nesbit
75% love
Compare
My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1858 Publication of 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'
1858 Publication of Ionica
1859 Discovery of Oil at Drake Well Sparks Pennsylvania Petroleum Boom
1859 First Commercial Oil Well Drilled in Titusville
1859 Publication of 'Adam Bede'
1859 The Carrington Event Aurora
1860 Abraham Lincoln Elected President
1860 Publication of 'Eternal Father, Strong to Save'

E. Nesbit

1862 Nesbit Family Moves to France
1880 Marriage to Hubert Bland
1884 Founding of the Fabian Society
1899 Publication of 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers'
1903 Involvement in the Women's Social and Political Union
1906 Publication of 'The Railway Children'
1914 Death of Hubert Bland
1922 Publication of 'The Lark' and Other Poems

Alice Meynell

1868 Alice Meynell's First Published Work
1872 Alice Meynell's Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1877 Marriage to Wilfrid Meynell
1890 Publication of 'The Rhythm of Life'
1897 Alice Meynell's Involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement
1903 Publication of 'The Poems of Alice Meynell'
1915 Death of Alice Meynell's Husband
1921 Publication of 'Last Poems'

Emotional landscapes

E. Nesbit: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Alice Meynell: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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