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

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott

Poet B

Robert Burns Robert Burns
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 78% Poems 85% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott

15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832 (~61)
2 live poems · English

Sir Walter Scott, born in Edinburgh on 15 August 1771 and dead at Abbotsford on 21 September 1832, became one of the most influential writers in the English language: a poet who dominated the reading public before Byron, a novelist who effectively established the modern historical novel, an editor and antiquarian who preserved Scottish oral traditions, a lawyer and public official, a conservative political figure, an…

“But never a being, from my infancy upwards, hated task-work as I hate it; and yet I have done a great deal in my day.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing
Robert Burns

Robert Burns

25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796 (~37)
33 live poems · English

Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, in southwestern Scotland, and died in Dumfries on 21 July 1796. In the relatively brief span of thirty-seven years, he became Scotland’s best-loved poet, a major maker and remaker of song, an incisive satirist, and an emblem of democratic fellow feeling. His reputation has sometimes obscured the complicated human being beneath it. Burns was…

“I have ever looked upon the independence of the peasantry of Scotland as one of the most valuable parts of the constitution of the country.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Poet-Musicians, Political Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Joy

In time

Sir Walter Scott
Robert Burns
1759 1832
They overlapped for 26 years (1771–1796). When Sir Walter Scott was born, Robert Burns was about 12. Sir Walter Scott was about 25 when Robert Burns died.

On the map

About 107 km separate Edinburgh, Scotland from Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland. 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

scottish social

Sir Walter Scott: edinburgh, abbotsford, charlotte carpenter, minstrelsy of the scottish border, the lay of the last minstrel, marmion, the lady of the lake, rokeby. Robert Burns: alloway, dumfries, william burnes, jean armour, the twa dogs, to a mouse, the holy fair, kilmarnock edition.

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.

Proud Maisie
Sir Walter Scott
77% death
Compare
The First Six Verses of the Ninetieth Psalm
Robert Burns
Proud Maisie
Sir Walter Scott
76% death
Compare
Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
Robert Burns
Proud Maisie
Sir Walter Scott
76% marriage, social
Compare
The Gallant Weaver
Robert Burns
Proud Maisie
Sir Walter Scott
76%
Compare
Thou whom chance may hither lead
Robert Burns
Proud Maisie
Sir Walter Scott
75% bird
Compare
The Banks O' Doon
Robert Burns
Proud Maisie
Sir Walter Scott
75%
Compare
Had I a cave
Robert Burns

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Sir Walter Scott: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing. Robert Burns: Tenderness, Longing, Joy.

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