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 Soutar William Soutar

Poet B

Francis Ledwidge Francis Ledwidge
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 71% Poems 88% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Soutar

William Soutar

28 April 1898 – 15 October 1943 (~45)
5 live poems · English

In a modest house on Wilson Street in Perth, Scotland, a small attic room served as both prison and sanctuary for one of Scotland's most remarkable twentieth-century poets. From this confined space, William Soutar would pen some of the most enduring children's verse in Scots literature while simultaneously crafting deeply personal meditations on mortality, isolation, and the human condition. His story is one of extra…

“I suppose I may claim to be both father and mother of such bairns as I produce; and certainly I am ever expectant that they have the breath of life in them.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Peace
Francis Ledwidge

Francis Ledwidge

19 August 1887 – 31 July 1917 (~30)
8 live poems · English

In the annals of Irish literature, few figures embody the tragic intersection of artistic promise and historical circumstance as poignantly as Francis Edward Ledwidge. Born into rural poverty in County Meath in 1887 and killed on a Belgian battlefield in 1917, Ledwidge's thirty years encompassed a meteoric rise from agricultural laborer to celebrated poet, a journey that mirrors the broader struggles of Ireland durin…

“I joined the British Army because she stood between Ireland and an enemy common to our civilisation, and I would not have her say that she defended us while we did nothing at home but pass resolutions.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Georgian Poets, Irish Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder

In time

William Soutar
Francis Ledwidge
1887 1943
They overlapped for 20 years (1898–1917). When William Soutar was born, Francis Ledwidge was about 11. William Soutar was about 19 when Francis Ledwidge died.

On the map

About 359 km separate Perth, Scotland from Slane, County Meath, Ireland. 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

William Soutar: perth, john soutar, margaret soutar, hms pegasus, ankylosing spondylitis, edinburgh university, scottish renaissance, hugh macdiarmid. Francis Ledwidge: county meath, slane, lord dunsany, thomas macdonagh, songs of the fields, songs of peace, irish cultural revival, gallipoli peninsula.

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.

Reverie
William Soutar
79% world
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
The Mood
William Soutar
79%
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
Sunny Shower
William Soutar
78% world
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
Reverie
William Soutar
77% world, garden, life
Compare
The Gardener
Francis Ledwidge
The Mood
William Soutar
76%
Compare
To a Sparrow
Francis Ledwidge
End is in beginning
William Soutar
76% life, world
Compare
The Cobbler of Sari Gueul
Francis Ledwidge

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Soutar: Wonder, Spirituality, Peace. Francis Ledwidge: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder.

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