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

Ernest Dowson Ernest Dowson

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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 78% Poems 92% Blended 84%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ernest Dowson

Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900 (~33)
18 live poems · English

In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to 1900—produced poetry of such delicate melancholy and exquisite craftsmanship that it continues to ca…

“My latest Valueless Villanelle I enclose you. It has been sent to Atalanta and I await its return with a philosophic resignation which I would I could muster equally where my prose is in question.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
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…

“Patchouli! Well, why not Patchouli? Is there any 'reason in nature' why we should write exclusively about the natural blush if the delicately acquired blush of rouge has any attraction for us?”

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

In time

Ernest Dowson
Arthur Symons
1865 1945
They overlapped for 34 years (1867–1900). When Ernest Dowson was born, Arthur Symons was about 2. Arthur Symons was about 35 when Ernest Dowson died.

On the map

About 426 km separate Canterbury, Kent, England from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Both have ground in Kent.

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

rhymers' club french london

Ernest Dowson: lee, kent, rhymers' club, william butler yeats, adelaide foltinowicz, verses, non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno cynarae, vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam, decadent movement. 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.

Terre Promise
Ernest Dowson
87%
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
Chanson Sans Paroles
Ernest Dowson
86% beauty
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
Chanson Sans Paroles
Ernest Dowson
85%
Compare
For a Picture of Watteau
Arthur Symons
De Amore
Ernest Dowson
84% love
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
To a Lost Love
Ernest Dowson
84% love, beauty
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
Terre Promise
Ernest Dowson
84%
Compare
For a Picture of Watteau
Arthur Symons

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ernest Dowson: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Arthur Symons: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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