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

Mary Lamb Mary Lamb

Poet B

Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Wordsworth
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 72% Poems 85% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Mary Lamb

Mary Lamb

3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847 (~83)
3 live poems · English

Mary Ann Lamb was born on 3 December 1764 in London, into a family whose modest respectability, intellectual curiosity, and later misfortunes would shape her entire life. She died on 20 May 1847, having survived nearly a decade beyond her beloved younger brother and lifelong collaborator, Charles Lamb. To many generations she was known principally as “Charles Lamb’s sister,” the anonymous or partially hidden partner…

“I think myself the only woman in the world who could live with a brother’s wife and make a real friend of her, partly from early observation of the unhappy example I have just given you, and partly from a knack I know I have of looking into people’s real characters and never expecting them to act out of it.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Tenderness, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Dorothy Wordsworth

Dorothy Wordsworth

25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855 (~84)
3 live poems · English

Dorothy Wordsworth was born on 25 December 1771 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the English Lake District, and died on 25 January 1855 at Rydal Mount, Westmorland. For much of the nineteenth century, she was remembered chiefly as the devoted sister and household companion of William Wordsworth, the poet whose name became central to English Romanticism. Modern readers, however, increasingly encounter her as a writer of…

“We saw a few daffodils close to the water side.”

Neighbourhood: Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Mary Lamb
Dorothy Wordsworth
1764 1855
They overlapped for 77 years (1771–1847). When Dorothy Wordsworth was born, Mary Lamb was about 7. Dorothy Wordsworth was about 76 when Mary Lamb died.
Mary Lamb in history Dorothy Wordsworth in history Years they were given

On the map

About 412 km separate 2 Crown Office Row, London, England from Cockermouth, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Mary Lamb

Dorothy Wordsworth

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

life world

Mary Lamb only

lamb rose envy tree garden self flower mind breakfast domestic room table

Dorothy Wordsworth only

children mother return absence family distance island nature floating change inevitability romantic

From the biographies

domestic

Mary Lamb: london, charles lamb, tales from shakespear, inner temple, william godwin, the needle, shakespearean comedies, mental illness. Dorothy Wordsworth: cockermouth, rydall mount, william wordsworth, lyrical ballads, alfoxden house, grasmere journal, recollections of a tour made in scotland, ann cookson wordsworth.

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.

Breakfast
Mary Lamb
76% life, world
Compare
The Mother’s Return
Dorothy Wordsworth
Envy
Mary Lamb
70% life
Compare
The Mother’s Return
Dorothy Wordsworth
The Two Boys
Mary Lamb
70%
Compare
He said he had been a soldier
Dorothy Wordsworth
Breakfast
Mary Lamb
70%
Compare
He said he had been a soldier
Dorothy Wordsworth
Envy
Mary Lamb
68%
Compare
He said he had been a soldier
Dorothy Wordsworth
The Two Boys
Mary Lamb
66%
Compare
The Mother’s Return
Dorothy Wordsworth

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1773 Publication of 'Poems on Various Subjects'
1774 Goethe publishes The Sorrows of Young Werther
1775 American Revolution Begins
1777 The Battles of Saratoga bring France towards the American alliance
1783 The Treaty of Paris (1783) Secures American Independence
1787 The Northwest Ordinance of 1787
1789 French Revolution Begins
1789 The Bastille Stormed — Prison Fortress Falls

Mary Lamb

1770 Mary Lamb's Early Education
1780 Mary Lamb Becomes a Governess
1796 Tragic Incident: Death of Mary Lamb's Mother
1807 Publication of 'Tales from Shakespeare'
1809 Publication of 'Mrs. Leicester's School'
1834 Charles Lamb's Death

Dorothy Wordsworth

1777 Childhood Relocation to Halifax
1794 Reunion with William Wordsworth
1797 Move to Alfoxden House
1798 Publication of Alfoxden Journal
1799 Move to Grasmere
1800 Publication of Grasmere Journals
1807 Publication of 'The Grasmere' Poem
1850 Death of William Wordsworth

Emotional landscapes

Mary Lamb: Peace, Tenderness, Longing. Dorothy Wordsworth: Tenderness, Longing, Sorrow.

Skip to main content