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

Francesco Petrarca Francesco Petrarca

Poet B

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri
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 68% Blended 68%
Swap sides Another related pair
Francesco Petrarca

Francesco Petrarca

1304 – 19 July 1374 (~70)
2 live poems · Italian

Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, was born on 20 July 1304 in Arezzo, Tuscany, and died during the night of 18–19 July 1374 at Arquà, near Padua. He stands among the decisive makers of European literary culture: a poet whose Italian lyrics established an enduring language of desire; a Latin author who sought to restore the prestige and moral seriousness of classical letters; a tireless correspondent a…

“Books have always been my friends, and among them I have found both counsel and consolation.”

Neighbourhood: Italian Renaissance Poets, Love Poets, Medieval Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri

c. May 1265 – 14 September 1321 (~56)
1 live poem · Italian

In the spring of 1265, beneath the shadow of Florence's rising towers, a child was born who would revolutionize not merely Italian literature but the entire Western imagination. Dante Alighieri entered a world of political turmoil, theological ferment, and artistic flowering, and he would spend his fifty-six years transforming personal anguish into universal art, political exile into cosmic vision, and earthly love i…

“The human race is at its best when it is most free.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Italian Renaissance Poets, Medieval Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Tenderness, Longing

In time

Francesco Petrarca
Dante Alighieri
1265 1374
They overlapped for 18 years (1304–1321). When Francesco Petrarca was born, Dante Alighieri was about 39. Francesco Petrarca was about 17 when Dante Alighieri died.

On the map

About 50 km separate Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy from Florence, Italy. Both have ground in Toscana.

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

Francesco Petrarca: arezzo, tuscany, avignon, canzoniere, rerum vulgarium fragmenta, laura, colonna family, cicero. Dante Alighieri: florence, divine comedy, beatrice portinari, vita nuova, guido cavalcanti, black guelphs, white guelphs, de monarchia.

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.

Canzoniere 61
Francesco Petrarca
83% love, divine
Compare
Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare
Dante Alighieri
Canzoniere 11
Francesco Petrarca
76% love, beauty
Compare
Tanto gentile, e tanto onesta pare
Dante Alighieri

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Francesco Petrarca: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. Dante Alighieri: Wonder, Tenderness, Longing.

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