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

Herbert Gorman Herbert Gorman

Poet B

Algernon Charles Swinburne Algernon Charles Swinburne
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 62% Poems 85% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
Herbert Gorman

Herbert Gorman

January 1893 – 28 October 1954 (~61)
2 live poems · English

Herbert Sherman Gorman entered the world in 1893 in Springfield, Massachusetts, a bustling industrial city nestled along the Connecticut River, where the hum of factories and the clang of railroads shaped the rhythms of daily life. Though the precise day of his birth remains unrecorded in many accounts, his arrival coincided with an America on the cusp of modernity, one foot still planted in the Victorian era and the…

“James Joyce was a creature of paradoxes, a man who possessed a tremendous amount of intellectual courage but was physically cautious.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Modernist Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne

5 April 1837 – 10 April 1909 (~72)
14 live poems · English

Algernon Charles Swinburne was born on 5 April 1837 at 7 Chester Street, Grosvenor Place, London, into a family whose rank, traditions, and geography would all enter his imagination. He was the eldest surviving child of Captain, later Admiral, Charles Henry Swinburne and Lady Jane Henrietta Ashburnham, daughter of the third Earl of Ashburnham. His inheritance was aristocratic, military, and literary. The Swinburnes p…

“As the technical work of a painter appeals to the eye, so the technical work of a poet appeals to the ear.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Dramatic Poets, Political Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Herbert Gorman
Algernon Charles Swinburne
1837 1954
They overlapped for 17 years (1893–1909). When Herbert Gorman was born, Algernon Charles Swinburne was about 56. Herbert Gorman was about 16 when Algernon Charles Swinburne died.

On the map

About 5,381 km separate Springfield, Massachusetts, USA from Grosvenor Place, London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

Herbert Gorman: springfield massachusetts, new york city, jean wright gorman, the barcarole of james smith, the procession of masks, the peterborough anthology, james joyce, a passage to india. Algernon Charles Swinburne: london, isle of wight, northumberland, captain charles henry swinburne, lady jane henrietta ashburnham, atalanta in calydon, poems and ballads, percy bysshe shelley.

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.

The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman
77% love
Compare
A Leave-Taking
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman
75% love
Compare
The Sundew
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Mandrake Root
Herbert Gorman
75% grief, love
Compare
In Time of Mourning
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Lilith, Lilith
Herbert Gorman
75%
Compare
In Time of Mourning
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Lilith, Lilith
Herbert Gorman
74%
Compare
A Leave-Taking
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Lilith, Lilith
Herbert Gorman
74% desire
Compare
By Twilight
Algernon Charles Swinburne

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Herbert Gorman: Despair, Sorrow, Longing. Algernon Charles Swinburne: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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