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

Philip Arthur Larkin Philip Arthur Larkin

Poet B

Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas
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 89% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Philip Arthur Larkin

Philip Arthur Larkin

9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985 (~63)
11 live poems · English

Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-1985) stands as one of the most significant English poets of the post-war era, a writer whose unflinching observations of ordinary life and masterful technical skill earned him a place among the finest poets of the 20th century. Often labeled as the "saddest heart in the post-war supermarket," Larkin crafted verse that captured the disillusionment and quiet desperation of modern Britain wit…

“I think that writing is rather like driving: you can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Neighbourhood: Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953 (~39)
94 live poems · English

Dylan Marlais Thomas stands as one of the most distinctive and influential voices in modern poetry, a writer whose work blazed with lyrical intensity and whose life burned with equal fervor. Born into the Welsh landscape that would forever shape his imagination, Thomas created a body of work that transcended national boundaries while remaining deeply rooted in the rhythms and imagery of his homeland. His poetry, char…

“God is the country of the spirit, and each of us is given a little holding of ground in that country.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality

In time

Philip Arthur Larkin
Dylan Thomas
1914 1985
They overlapped for 32 years (1922–1953). When Philip Arthur Larkin was born, Dylan Thomas was about 8. Philip Arthur Larkin was about 31 when Dylan Thomas died.

On the map

About 189 km separate Radford, Coventry, England from Swansea, Wales. 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

Philip Arthur Larkin: coventry, university librarian, st. john's college, kingsley amis, the less deceived, the whitsun weddings, church going, toads. Dylan Thomas: swansea, caitlin macnamara, 18 poems, do not go gentle into that good night, under milk wood, gwilym marles, south wales, bbc broadcaster.

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.

Latest Face
Philip Arthur Larkin
79% love
Compare
Their faces shone under some radiance
Dylan Thomas
Latest Face
Philip Arthur Larkin
78% face
Compare
Lift up your face
Dylan Thomas
Latest Face
Philip Arthur Larkin
77% desire
Compare
Cabaret
Dylan Thomas
Latest Face
Philip Arthur Larkin
77%
Compare
Sometimes the Sky’s Too Bright
Dylan Thomas
Long Last
Philip Arthur Larkin
77% life, death, mortality
Compare
Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas
Who called love conquering
Philip Arthur Larkin
77%
Compare
Out of the sighs
Dylan Thomas

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Philip Arthur Larkin: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. Dylan Thomas: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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