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

Ebenezer Elliott Ebenezer Elliott

Poet B

William Cowper William Cowper
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 72% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ebenezer Elliott

Ebenezer Elliott

17 March 1781 – 1 December 1849 (~68)
1 live poem · English

Ebenezer Elliott was born on 17 March 1781 at Masbrough, near Rotherham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and died on 1 December 1849 at Great Houghton, near Barnsley. He became known in his own lifetime as the “Corn Law Rhymer,” a title at once admiring, limiting, and revealing. It identified him with the campaign against the laws that kept imported grain expensive and bread beyond the reach of many poor families, b…

“The truth is, I am not a poet. The thoughts of genuine poets flow without effort, as from a fountain; I have to pump from mine, and the well is not my own.”

Neighbourhood: Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Anger, Sorrow, Fear
William Cowper

William Cowper

26 November 1731 – 25 April 1800 (~69)
2 live poems · English

William Cowper was born on 26 November 1731 in the rectory at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the fourth child of the Reverend John Cowper, rector of the parish, and Ann Donne Cowper. His family belonged to the educated clerical and professional class, and it possessed distinguished connections: his father’s lineage included the Lord Chancellor William Cowper, while his mother was descended from the poet John Donne. Such…

“Home is the nicest word there is.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Tenderness, Wonder

In time

Ebenezer Elliott
William Cowper
1731 1849
They overlapped for 20 years (1781–1800). When Ebenezer Elliott was born, William Cowper was about 50. Ebenezer Elliott was about 19 when William Cowper died.

On the map

About 193 km separate Rotherham, England from Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, 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

From the biographies

Ebenezer Elliott: masbrough, corn law rhymer, great houghton, sheffield, frances gartside, the splendid village, the ranter, the village patriarch. William Cowper: berkhamsted, john donne, on the receipt of my mother's picture, william hayley, theodora cowper, st. albans, olney hymns, god moves in a mysterious way.

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.

Battle Song
Ebenezer Elliott
68% social
Compare
The Lily and the Rose
William Cowper
Battle Song
Ebenezer Elliott
62% social
Compare
To a Young Lady
William Cowper

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ebenezer Elliott: Anger, Sorrow, Fear. William Cowper: Peace, Tenderness, Wonder.

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