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

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poet B

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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 73% Poems 91% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822 (~30)
13 live poems · English

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, the Shelley family home near Horsham in Sussex, and died on 8 July 1822, drowned in the Gulf of Spezia off the Italian coast before he had reached his thirtieth birthday. The extraordinary compression of his life has encouraged a legend of Shelley as the beautiful, doomed Romantic rebel: an ethereal poet, political prophet, atheist, lover, exile, and vict…

“The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to nothing but error and confusion.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834 (~62)
26 live poems · English

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in Ottery St Mary, Devon, and died on 25 July 1834 at Highgate, near London. He occupies an unusual and commanding place in English literary history: he was at once one of the makers of Romantic poetry, a revolutionary critic of Shakespeare and poetic language, a philosophical mediator between German idealism and English thought, a political journalist, a religious…

“What is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one?”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing

In time

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1772 1834
They overlapped for 31 years (1792–1822). When Percy Bysshe Shelley was born, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was about 20. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was about 50 when Percy Bysshe Shelley died.

On the map

About 207 km separate Field Place, Horsham, Sussex, England from Ottery St. Mary, Devon, England. Both have ground in England.

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley only

Samuel Taylor Coleridge only

From the biographies

power imagination philosophical

Percy Bysshe Shelley: field place, gulf of spezia, sussex, thomas jefferson hogg, harriet westbrook, mary godwin, queen mab, the necessity of atheism. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: ottery st mary, highgate, the rime of the ancient mariner, kubla khan, christabel, biographia literaria, william wordsworth, charles lamb.

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.

O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
84% self, nature
Compare
Human Life
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Love's Philosophy
Percy Bysshe Shelley
82% love, world, desire
Compare
Catullian Hendecasyllables
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
81% imagination, beauty
Compare
To the Autumnal Moon
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
80%
Compare
Pantisocracy
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
80% nature
Compare
Work Without Hope
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Past
Percy Bysshe Shelley
80% life
Compare
Youth and Age
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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