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

Antonio Machado Antonio Machado

Poet B

Ernest Dowson Ernest Dowson
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 63% Poems 84% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
Antonio Machado

Antonio Machado

26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939 (~64)
3 live poems · Spanish

In the pantheon of Spanish literature, few figures command the reverence and enduring relevance of Antonio Machado y Ruiz (1875-1939). A poet whose verses captured the essence of a nation's soul while simultaneously transcending national boundaries to speak to universal human experience, Machado stands as perhaps the most beloved voice of Spain's Generation of '98. His poetry, characterized by profound philosophical…

“Hay dos clases de hombres: los que viven hablando de las virtudes y los que se limitan a tenerlas.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness
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…

“I confess Our Lady of the Seven Hills encroaches on me, in these latter days.”

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

In time

Antonio Machado
Ernest Dowson
1867 1939
They overlapped for 26 years (1875–1900). When Antonio Machado was born, Ernest Dowson was about 8. Antonio Machado was about 25 when Ernest Dowson died.

On the map

About 1,642 km separate Seville, Spain from Canterbury, Kent, 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

tuberculosis french

Antonio Machado: generation of '98, seville, soria, leonor izquierdo, soledades, orillas del duero, campos de castilla, proverbios y cantares. 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.

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.

Campo
Antonio Machado
78% love, life
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
Campo
Antonio Machado
78% love
Compare
To a Lost Love
Ernest Dowson
Rosa de Fuego
Antonio Machado
77% love, life
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
Campo
Antonio Machado
77% love, life
Compare
Vitae Summa Brevis
Ernest Dowson
Campo
Antonio Machado
77% love
Compare
Exchanges
Ernest Dowson
Rosa de Fuego
Antonio Machado
76% love, life
Compare
Vitae Summa Brevis
Ernest Dowson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Antonio Machado: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness. Ernest Dowson: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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