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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

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.

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

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Poet B

Arthur Symons Arthur Symons
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 67% Poems 84% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

1836 – 1870 (~34)
2 live poems · Spanish

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, born Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida on February 17, 1836, in Seville, and dead in Madrid on December 22, 1870, became one of the most beloved and influential voices in Spanish poetry despite publishing no definitive collection of his poems during his lifetime. His reputation rests chiefly on the Rimas, brief lyric poems of extraordinary intimacy, and the Leyendas, prose tales in whic…

“The poetry is you, I told you, because poetry is feeling, and feeling is woman.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 – 22 January 1945 (~80)
23 live poems · English

Arthur Symons was born on 28 February 1865 at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, into a household shaped by religious discipline, frequent movement, and intellectual aspiration. He was the son of the Reverend Arthur Symons, a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and Mary Ann Symons. His father’s ministry required the family to move from place to place, and the boy’s childhood was therefore less rooted in one local communit…

“Is there reason why one's love for a dog is so like what one's love may be for a woman, that they are so near a part of the earth, and so have a kind of wonder for us?”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Arthur Symons
1836 1945
They overlapped for 6 years (1865–1870). When Arthur Symons was born, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer was about 29. Arthur Symons was about 5 when Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer died.
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer in history Arthur Symons in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,594 km separate Seville, Andalusia, Spain from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Arthur Symons

Open both on the History Atlas

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

love beauty beloved world life

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer only

return flowers birds romantic spanish presence

Arthur Symons only

woman desire light eyes memory face self urban reality consciousness dawn

From the biographies

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: seville, madrid, rimas, leyendas, valeriano bécquer, jose domínguez insausti, manuela monahay, narciso campillo. Arthur Symons: milford haven, wales, reverend arthur symons, days and nights, silhouettes, london literary life, rhymers' club, w. b. yeats.

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.

Rima LIII
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
81% beloved, love
Compare
Her Street
Arthur Symons
Rima LIII
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
80% love, beauty
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
Rima XXI
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
79% life, beauty, love
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
Rima LIII
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
79% beloved, love, world
Compare
Love in Dreams
Arthur Symons
Rima XXI
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
78% love
Compare
For a Picture of Watteau
Arthur Symons
Rima LIII
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
78% beloved
Compare
Perfume
Arthur Symons

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
1865 Publication of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'
1865 Surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox
1865 Thirteenth Amendment Ratified
1868 Fourteenth Amendment Ratified
1868 The Helium Discovery Eclipse
1869 Completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad
1870 Hardy Meets Emma Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

1841 Death of Bécquer's Father
1847 Orphaned at a Young Age
1850 Education at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts
1854 Move to Madrid
1861 Marriage to Casta Esteban
1864 Publication of 'Leyendas'
1868 Death of Bécquer's Wife
1871 Publication of 'Rimas'

Arthur Symons

1880 Extensive Travels in France and Italy
1889 Publication of 'Days and Nights'
1895 Publication of 'London Nights'
1896 Symons Edits The Savoy Magazine
1899 Publication of 'The Symbolist Movement in Literature'
1900 Travel to Paris and Influence of French Culture
1901 Marriage to Rhoda Bowser
1908 Mental Breakdown in Italy

Emotional landscapes

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer: Tenderness, Spirituality, Wonder. Arthur Symons: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

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