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

Rose Milligan Rose Milligan

Poet B

Edna St. Vincent Millay Edna St. Vincent Millay
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 77% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Rose Milligan

Rose Milligan

1938 – 2024 (~86)
1 live poem · English

Born in the rugged landscapes of Yorkshire in 1938, Rose Milligan entered a world still echoing with the resilience forged by the interwar years and the looming shadows of global conflict. Yorkshire, with its rolling moors, industrial grit, and timeless valleys, would imprint itself deeply upon her sensibility, nurturing a quiet appreciation for the natural world that later blossomed into poetic reflection. Though de…

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Light Verse Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Tenderness
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

22 February 1892 – 19 October 1950 (~58)
100 live poems · English

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22 February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, and died on 19 October 1950 at her home in Austerlitz, New York. During her lifetime she became one of the most visible and commercially successful poets in the United States: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a celebrated public reader, a playwright, a lyricist, a political writer, and an emblem of the modern, sexually independent “New Woman.” Her fame…

“The poet is not a man who says what he thinks, but a man who says what he feels.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Confessional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Rose Milligan
Edna St. Vincent Millay
1892 2024
They overlapped for 13 years (1938–1950). When Rose Milligan was born, Edna St. Vincent Millay was about 46. Rose Milligan was about 12 when Edna St. Vincent Millay died.

On the map

About 4,816 km separate United Kingdom from Rockland, Maine, USA. 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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Rose Milligan only

Edna St. Vincent Millay only

From the biographies

Rose Milligan: north lancashire, lake district, dust if you must, the lady magazine, great-great-grandchildren, stage 3 uterine cancer, his heart ministry, the glory gathering. Edna St. Vincent Millay: rockland, maine, austerlitz, new york, pulitzer prize, renascence, caroline b. dow, vassar college, greenwich village, a few figs from thistles.

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.

Dust if You Must
Rose Milligan
73%
Compare
Ashes of Life
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dust if You Must
Rose Milligan
73%
Compare
Doubt no more that Oberon
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dust if You Must
Rose Milligan
72%
Compare
To a Poet that Died Young
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dust if You Must
Rose Milligan
72%
Compare
Afternoon on a Hill
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dust if You Must
Rose Milligan
72% dust
Compare
What thing is this that, built of salt and lime
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dust if You Must
Rose Milligan
71% domestic
Compare
Portrait by a Neighbour
Edna St. Vincent Millay

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Rose Milligan: Wonder, Peace, Tenderness. Edna St. Vincent Millay: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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