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

Joanna Baillie Joanna Baillie
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 71% Poems 80% Blended 75%
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
Joanna Baillie

Joanna Baillie

11 September 1762 – 23 February 1851 (~89)
5 live poems · English

Joanna Baillie was born on 11 September 1762 at the manse of Bothwell, near Hamilton in Lanarkshire, Scotland, and died on 23 February 1851 at Hampstead, then a village on the northern edge of London. During her exceptionally long life, she became one of the most admired British writers of the Romantic period: a poet of acute observation, an ambitious theorist of the emotions, a dramatist who sought to renew tragedy…

“I have wished to leave behind me in the world a few plays, some of which might have a chance of continuing to be acted even in our canvas theatres and barns.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Longing

In time

Mary Robinson
Joanna Baillie
1757 1851
They overlapped for 39 years (1762–1800). When Joanna Baillie was born, Mary Robinson was about 5. Joanna Baillie was about 38 when Mary Robinson died.

On the map

About 493 km separate Bristol, England from Bothwell, Lanarkshire, 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

women woman social

Mary Robinson: bristol, london, perdita, george prince of wales, thomas robinson, debtors' prison, hannah more, vancenza; or, the dangers of credulity. Joanna Baillie: bothwell, lanarkshire, james baillie, dorothea hunter baillie, william hunter, a series of plays, de monfort, the witchcraft.

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.

January, 1795
Mary Robinson
71% power
Compare
I've No Sheep on the Mountain
Joanna Baillie
London's Summer Morning
Mary Robinson
70%
Compare
Saw Ye Johnny Comin
Joanna Baillie
London's Summer Morning
Mary Robinson
70%
Compare
Sweet Power of Song
Joanna Baillie
January, 1795
Mary Robinson
70% social, power
Compare
Sweet Power of Song
Joanna Baillie
London's Summer Morning
Mary Robinson
70% life
Compare
To a Child
Joanna Baillie

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Mary Robinson: Sorrow, Irony, Despair. Joanna Baillie: Tenderness, Joy, Longing.

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