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

Robert Browning Robert Browning

Poet B

Walter Savage Landor Walter Savage Landor
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 77% Poems 91% Blended 83%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert Browning

Robert Browning

7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889 (~77)
19 live poems · English

Robert Browning was born on 7 May 1812 at Southampton Cottage, Camberwell, then a semi-rural district south of London, and died on 12 December 1889 in Venice. Few English poets have combined such audacity of intellect, dramatic energy, moral curiosity, and technical resourcefulness. During his lifetime he moved from the position of a puzzling, frequently mocked young writer to that of a revered elder of Victorian let…

“A poet's affair is with God, to whom he is accountable, and of whom is his reward: look elsewhere, and you find misery enough.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor

30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864 (~89)
8 live poems · English

Walter Savage Landor was born on 30 January 1775 at Ipsley Court, near Warwick, England, into circumstances of comfort, cultivation, and inherited expectation. His father, Walter Landor, was a physician of substantial means and social standing; his mother, Elizabeth Savage, came from a family whose name and property gave her son the middle name he would make inseparable from his literary identity. Landor’s life, whic…

“Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair

In time

Robert Browning
Walter Savage Landor
1775 1889
They overlapped for 53 years (1812–1864). When Robert Browning was born, Walter Savage Landor was about 37. Robert Browning was about 52 when Walter Savage Landor died.

On the map

About 140 km separate Camberwell, London, England from Warwick, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom, Italy.

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

Robert Browning: southampton cottage, venice, dramatic monologue, elizabeth barrett browning, pauline: a fragment of a confession, my last duchess, porphyria's lover, pippa passes. Walter Savage Landor: ipsley court, warwick, florence, gebir, julia thuillier, imaginary conversations, trinity college, oxford.

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.

The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
85% woman, love
Compare
The Maid’s Lament
Walter Savage Landor
Epilogue
Robert Browning
83% death, life
Compare
Age
Walter Savage Landor
My Star
Robert Browning
82% star, love
Compare
The Lover
Walter Savage Landor
Prospice
Robert Browning
80% death, life
Compare
Age
Walter Savage Landor
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
80% love
Compare
She I love (alas in vain!)
Walter Savage Landor
Evelyn Hope
Robert Browning
80% love, death, life
Compare
The Maid’s Lament
Walter Savage Landor

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Robert Browning: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder. Walter Savage Landor: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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