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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

William Walsh William Walsh

Poet B

William Lisle Bowles William Lisle Bowles
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 83% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Walsh

William Walsh

6 October 1662 – 15 March 1708 (~46)
2 live poems · English

William Walsh was born on 6 October 1662 at Abberley Hall in Worcestershire, into a world in which inherited land, family connection, political loyalty, and literary cultivation could reinforce one another. He died on 15 March 1708, only forty-five years old, having lived as a country gentleman, Member of Parliament, court servant, poet, playwright, critic, and, perhaps most memorably, an early patron and adviser of…

“An epigram, it is true, is but a trifle, but so difficult a trifle that Rapin says it is enough to have made one good in one's lifetime.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles

24 September 1762 – 7 April 1850 (~88)
8 live poems · English

William Lisle Bowles (September 24, 1762 - April 7, 1850) stands as one of the more intriguing transitional figures in English literature, occupying the liminal space between Neoclassicism and Romanticism. Though his reputation has diminished considerably over the centuries, Bowles's influence on major Romantic poets—particularly Samuel Taylor Coleridge—establishes him as a crucial bridge between literary eras. As a…

“The objects of artificial life are, per se, less fitted for the purposes of poetry than those of nature, and than the passions of the human heart.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality

In time

William Walsh
William Lisle Bowles
1662 1850
Their lives did not overlap. 54 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 77 km separate Abberley, Worcestershire, England from King's Sutton, Northamptonshire, England. 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

history

William Walsh: abberley hall, worcestershire, alexander pope, restoration, augustan age, a dialogue concerning women, letters and poems, william congreve. William Lisle Bowles: king's sutton, northamptonshire, samuel taylor coleridge, fourteen sonnets, natural imagery, romanticism, dr. joseph warton, the fair fidelia.

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.

Rivals
William Walsh
77% heart
Compare
Dover Cliffs
William Lisle Bowles
Rivals
William Walsh
76% love
Compare
Oh! when 'tis summer weather
William Lisle Bowles
Rivals
William Walsh
76%
Compare
To a Friend
William Lisle Bowles
Rivals
William Walsh
73%
Compare
Hymn to Woden
William Lisle Bowles
Rivals
William Walsh
72% life
Compare
Fairy Sketch
William Lisle Bowles
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
72% love
Compare
Oh! when 'tis summer weather
William Lisle Bowles

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

William Walsh: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. William Lisle Bowles: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality.

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