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

Mary Robinson Mary Robinson

Poet B

Charlotte Smith Charlotte Smith
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 73% Poems 85% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson

27 November 1757 – 26 December 1800 (~43)
2 live poems · English

Mary Robinson, born Mary Darby on 27 November 1757 and dead on 26 December 1800, was one of the most conspicuous and variously gifted women of late Georgian Britain. In her forty-three years she became, successively and often simultaneously, a schoolgirl poet, an unhappy wife, a debtor’s-prison inmate, a successful London actress, the notorious mistress of the Prince of Wales, a fashion celebrity, a political comment…

“The barbarity of custom’s law in this enlightened country has long been exercised to the prejudice of woman: and even the laws of honour have been perverted to oppress her.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Despair
Charlotte Smith

Charlotte Smith

4 May 1749 – 28 October 1806 (~57)
7 live poems · English

Charlotte Smith was born Charlotte Turner in London on 4 May 1749 and died at Tilford, near Farnham in Surrey, on 28 October 1806. During her lifetime she was known not only as a poet but as one of the most productive and commercially important writers in Britain. She published poetry, novels, children’s books, translations, and educational works while sustaining a large family and enduring a marriage, a debt crisis,…

“The indulgence with which the public has received these poems has encouraged the author to offer them again.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

Mary Robinson
Charlotte Smith
1749 1806
They overlapped for 44 years (1757–1800). When Mary Robinson was born, Charlotte Smith was about 8. Charlotte Smith was about 51 when Mary Robinson died.

On the map

About 146 km separate Bristol, England from Stoke next Guildford, Surrey, England. 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

london woman social

Mary Robinson: bristol, london, perdita, george prince of wales, thomas robinson, debtors' prison, hannah more, vancenza; or, the dangers of credulity. Charlotte Smith: london, elegiac sonnets, the old manor house, the emigrants, nicholas turner, benjamin smith, french revolution, georgian england.

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.

London's Summer Morning
Mary Robinson
77%
Compare
To a Nightingale
Charlotte Smith
January, 1795
Mary Robinson
76% social, culture
Compare
To the Shade of Burns
Charlotte Smith
January, 1795
Mary Robinson
76% social, society
Compare
The Dead Beggar
Charlotte Smith
London's Summer Morning
Mary Robinson
74% life
Compare
The Dead Beggar
Charlotte Smith
London's Summer Morning
Mary Robinson
74%
Compare
The Glow-Worm
Charlotte Smith
January, 1795
Mary Robinson
73%
Compare
Go! cruel tyrant of the human breast
Charlotte Smith

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Mary Robinson: Sorrow, Irony, Despair. Charlotte Smith: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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