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

John Clare John Clare

Poet B

Barry Cornwall Barry Cornwall
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 70% Poems 89% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Clare

John Clare

13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864 (~71)
18 live poems · English

John Clare was born on 13 July 1793 in Helpston, a village then in Northamptonshire and now associated with Cambridgeshire, and died on 20 May 1864 in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. He came to be called the “peasant poet,” a phrase that helped sell his first books but also diminished him by making his social origins seem more important than his imagination. Clare was indeed the son of agricultural labourers, a m…

“I have been always fond of nature and solitude, and they have been my chief delight.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality
Barry Cornwall

Barry Cornwall

21 November 1787 – 5 October 1874 (~87)
10 live poems · English

Bryan Waller Procter, known to generations of readers by the literary name Barry Cornwall, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 21 November 1787, and died in London on 5 October 1874. He belonged to that broad, fascinating company of early nineteenth-century writers who stood close to the great Romantic generation without ever wholly entering its innermost circle. He was not a poet of Byron’s volcanic self-dramatization,…

“My mother was simply the kindest and tenderest mother in the world.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness

In time

John Clare
Barry Cornwall
1787 1874
They overlapped for 72 years (1793–1864). When John Clare was born, Barry Cornwall was about 6. Barry Cornwall was about 77 when John Clare died.

On the map

About 152 km separate Helpston, Northamptonshire, England from Leeds, Yorkshire, 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

social romantic

John Clare: helpston, northamptonshire, peasant poet, mary joyce, martha turner, poems descriptive of rural life and scenery, the village minstrel, the mores. Barry Cornwall: leeds, charles lamb, adelaide anne procter, dramatic scenes and other poems, the life of edmund kean, english songs, the sea, touch us gently, time!.

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.

On an Infant's Grave
John Clare
81% grave, death, life
Compare
History of a Life
Barry Cornwall
What is Life?
John Clare
81% life, death
Compare
History of a Life
Barry Cornwall
On an Infant's Grave
John Clare
80% death, heaven
Compare
Peace! what do tears avail?
Barry Cornwall
Love Lives Beyond the Tomb
John Clare
80% romantic, life
Compare
A Poet's Thought
Barry Cornwall
Thoughts in a Church-Yard
John Clare
79% life, death
Compare
History of a Life
Barry Cornwall
What is Life?
John Clare
79% suffering, death
Compare
Peace! what do tears avail?
Barry Cornwall

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Clare: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality. Barry Cornwall: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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