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

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth

Poet B

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley
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 72% Poems 91% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850 (~80)
51 live poems · English

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the northwestern corner of England, and died on 23 April 1850 at Rydal Mount in the Lake District. Few poets have altered English literary culture so thoroughly. With Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth helped establish the principles of British Romanticism: a new seriousness about ordinary life, a conviction that emotional experience could be…

“I yield to none in love for my art. I, therefore, labour at it with reverence, affection, and industry.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822 (~30)
13 live poems · English

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, the Shelley family home near Horsham in Sussex, and died on 8 July 1822, drowned in the Gulf of Spezia off the Italian coast before he had reached his thirtieth birthday. The extraordinary compression of his life has encouraged a legend of Shelley as the beautiful, doomed Romantic rebel: an ethereal poet, political prophet, atheist, lover, exile, and vict…

“The savage is to the civilized man, as the child is to the adult.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality

In time

William Wordsworth
Percy Bysshe Shelley
1770 1850
They overlapped for 31 years (1792–1822). When Percy Bysshe Shelley was born, William Wordsworth was about 22. William Wordsworth was about 52 when Percy Bysshe Shelley died.

On the map

About 447 km separate Cockermouth, Cumberland, England from Field Place, Horsham, Sussex, England. Both have ground in England.

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

William Wordsworth only

Percy Bysshe Shelley only

From the biographies

William Wordsworth: cockermouth, lake district, samuel taylor coleridge, the prelude, lyrical ballads, annette vallon, the borderers, the ruined cottage. Percy Bysshe Shelley: field place, gulf of spezia, sussex, thomas jefferson hogg, harriet westbrook, mary godwin, queen mab, the necessity of atheism.

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 World Is Too Much With Us
William Wordsworth
82% world, nature
Compare
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
With how sad steps, O Moon thou climb'st the sky
William Wordsworth
81% world, beauty
Compare
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening
William Wordsworth
81% nature, beauty
Compare
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Written in London. September, 1802
William Wordsworth
81%
Compare
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Affliction of Margaret
William Wordsworth
80% world, love
Compare
O! there are spirits of the air
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth
80% nature, cloud
Compare
The Cloud
Percy Bysshe Shelley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Wordsworth: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing. Percy Bysshe Shelley: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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