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

Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë

Poet B

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
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 69% Poems 90% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë

21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855 (~39)
7 live poems · English

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816 at Thornton, near Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the third surviving child of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë. She died on 31 March 1855, not yet thirty-nine years old, after creating a body of work that transformed the English novel. Though chiefly celebrated as a novelist, she began as a poet, wrote poetry throughout her life, and brought a poet’s inten…

“I would always rather be happy than dignified, and I ran a real risk of being thought ridiculous.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan

22 March 1808 – 15 June 1877 (~69)
10 live poems · English

Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan, later Caroline Norton and, in the final months of her life, Lady Stirling-Maxwell, was born in London on 22 March 1808 and died in London on 15 June 1877. She was a poet, novelist, dramatist, political hostess, journalist, pamphleteer, and one of the most consequential campaigners for married women’s legal rights in nineteenth-century Britain. Her fame during her lifetime rested partly on…

“The married woman has no legal existence: her being is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband, under whose wing, protection, and cover she performs everything.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Charlotte Brontë
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
1808 1877
They overlapped for 40 years (1816–1855). When Charlotte Brontë was born, Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan was about 8. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan was about 47 when Charlotte Brontë died.

On the map

About 278 km separate Thornton, Yorkshire, England from Mayfair, London. 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

women marriage

Charlotte Brontë: thornton, bradford, jane eyre, villette, patrick brontë, maria branwell brontë, angrian chronicles, gondal. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan: london, caroline henrietta callander, the sorrows of rosalie, the undying one, george chapple norton, lord melbourne, custody of infants act 1839, richard brinsley sheridan.

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.

Parting
Charlotte Brontë
85% memory
Compare
When First I Loved Thee
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
Parting
Charlotte Brontë
83%
Compare
Farewell
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
Watching and Wishing
Charlotte Brontë
81% beloved, love
Compare
Oh, Love Me! Love Me Still!
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
Watching and Wishing
Charlotte Brontë
80% beloved, love, self
Compare
I Do Not Love Thee
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
Watching and Wishing
Charlotte Brontë
80% beloved, love
Compare
Love Not
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan
Parting
Charlotte Brontë
80%
Compare
We Have Been Friends Together
Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Charlotte Brontë: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder. Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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