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

Thomas Edwards Hankinson Thomas Edwards Hankinson

Poet B

Robert Southey Robert Southey
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 82% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Edwards Hankinson

Thomas Edwards Hankinson

19 June 1805 – 6 October 1843 (~38)
2 live poems · English

Thomas Edwards Hankinson was born at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, on 19 June 1805, and died at Stainley Hall near Ripon, Yorkshire, on 6 October 1843. His short life coincided with a period of exceptional change in British religious, literary, and social history: the final decades of the Romantic movement, the Reform crisis, the growth of evangelical and missionary culture, and the opening of the Victorian age. He was neith…

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Joy
Robert Southey

Robert Southey

12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843 (~69)
4 live poems · English

Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…

“A good man and a wise man may at times be angry with the world, at times grieved for it; but be sure no man was ever discontented with the world if he did his duty in it.”

Neighbourhood: Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder

In time

Thomas Edwards Hankinson
Robert Southey
1774 1843
They overlapped for 39 years (1805–1843). When Thomas Edwards Hankinson was born, Robert Southey was about 31.

On the map

About 245 km separate St Germans, Norfolk, England from Bristol, England. Both have ground in England.

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

religious

Thomas Edwards Hankinson: king's lynn, norfolk, stainley hall, ripon, seatonian prize, sacred poems, david playing the harp before saul, the plague stayed. Robert Southey: bristol, greta hall, lake district, pantisocracy, edward fricker, samuel taylor coleridge, joan of arc, thalaba the destroyer.

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.

Pleasures of the Visible World
Thomas Edwards Hankinson
75%
Compare
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
Pleasures of the Visible World
Thomas Edwards Hankinson
74%
Compare
My days among the Dead are past
Robert Southey
Mathematics
Thomas Edwards Hankinson
66% marriage
Compare
The Well of St. Keyne
Robert Southey
Pleasures of the Visible World
Thomas Edwards Hankinson
65%
Compare
The Complaints of the Poor
Robert Southey
Pleasures of the Visible World
Thomas Edwards Hankinson
64% life
Compare
The Well of St. Keyne
Robert Southey
Mathematics
Thomas Edwards Hankinson
64%
Compare
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Edwards Hankinson: Longing, Tenderness, Joy. Robert Southey: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder.

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