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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

Gwendolyn B. Bennett Gwendolyn B. Bennett

Poet B

Edmund William Gosse Edmund William Gosse
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 54% Poems 83% Blended 67%
Swap sides Another related pair
Gwendolyn B. Bennett

Gwendolyn B. Bennett

8 July 1902 – 30 May 1981 (~79)
3 live poems · English

Gwendolyn B. Bennett was a radiant force in American literature and art, a woman whose life wove together the threads of creativity, resilience, and quiet revolution during one of the most electrifying cultural awakenings in the nation's history. Born on July 8, 1902, in Giddings, Texas, and passing away on May 30, 1981, in Reading, Pennsylvania, at the age of seventy-eight, Bennett embodied the spirit of the Harlem…

“Could I mark this day I should put a black ring around it as one of the saddest days I have ever spent.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
Edmund William Gosse

Edmund William Gosse

21 September 1849 – 16 May 1928 (~79)
2 live poems · English

Edmund William Gosse occupies a peculiar and fascinating position in the landscape of English literature. Neither wholly a major poet nor a minor footnote, he exists instead as a crucial connector, a literary ambassador who bridged the austere certainties of Victorian England with the modernist experiments of the twentieth century. Born on September 21, 1849, in London, and dying on May 16, 1928, in the same city, Go…

“The object of biography is not merely to record facts, but to reveal character.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Longing

In time

Gwendolyn B. Bennett
Edmund William Gosse
1849 1981
They overlapped for 27 years (1902–1928). When Gwendolyn B. Bennett was born, Edmund William Gosse was about 53. Gwendolyn B. Bennett was about 26 when Edmund William Gosse died.

On the map

About 7,867 km separate Giddings, Texas, USA from London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

Gwendolyn B. Bennett: giddings, texas, harlem renaissance, heritage, to usward, the crisis, fire!!, wadsworth, nevada, brooklyn, new york. Edmund William Gosse: london, philip henry gosse, emily bowes, on viol and flute, king erik, pre-raphaelites, henrik ibsen, father and son.

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.

Dirge
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
75% love
Compare
I stand before you as a beggar stands
Edmund William Gosse
Secret
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
75% beloved
Compare
I stand before you as a beggar stands
Edmund William Gosse
Dirge
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
70%
Compare
The Charcoal-Burner
Edmund William Gosse
Hatred
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
70%
Compare
I stand before you as a beggar stands
Edmund William Gosse
Hatred
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
68%
Compare
The Charcoal-Burner
Edmund William Gosse
Secret
Gwendolyn B. Bennett
67%
Compare
The Charcoal-Burner
Edmund William Gosse

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Gwendolyn B. Bennett: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Edmund William Gosse: Tenderness, Peace, Longing.

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