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

Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Lord Tennyson

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 74% Poems 91% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 (~83)
27 live poems · English

Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…

“You must always stand up for Maud when you hear my pet bantling abused. Perhaps that is why I am sensitive about her. You know mothers always make the most of a child that is abused.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
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…

“Symbolism, in literature, is the expression of the unseen by means of the visible.”

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

In time

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Arthur Symons
1809 1945
They overlapped for 28 years (1865–1892). When Arthur Symons was born, Alfred Lord Tennyson was about 56. Arthur Symons was about 27 when Alfred Lord Tennyson died.

On the map

About 381 km separate Somersby, Lincolnshire, England from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. 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

Alfred Lord Tennyson: somersby, lincolnshire, victorian age, arthur henry hallam, in memoriam, the lady of shalott, the lotos-eaters, ulysses. 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.

Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
84% love, memory, past
Compare
Her Street
Arthur Symons
The Miller’s Daughter
Alfred Lord Tennyson
82% beloved
Compare
Love in Dreams
Arthur Symons
Come into the garden, Maud
Alfred Lord Tennyson
82% love
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
A Farewell
Alfred Lord Tennyson
81%
Compare
The Last Exit
Arthur Symons
A Farewell
Alfred Lord Tennyson
80%
Compare
For a Picture of Watteau
Arthur Symons
Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
80% love
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

Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow. Arthur Symons: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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