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

Ada Cambridge Ada Cambridge

Poet B

Amelia Alderson Opie Amelia Alderson Opie
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 89% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ada Cambridge

Ada Cambridge

21 November 1844 – 19 July 1926 (~82)
6 live poems · English

Ada Cambridge, who would become one of colonial Australia's most prolific and quietly subversive literary voices, was born on 21 November 1844 at St Germans, Norfolk, England. She was the second child of Thomasine and Henry Cambridge, a gentleman farmer of comfortable means. The Norfolk countryside, with its flat, expansive skies and ancient, weathered churches, would seep into her imagination and later resurface in…

“She did not mind harrowing my infant soul with fore-knowledge of the world's agonies, and I do not know that she was wrong.”

Neighbourhood: Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Amelia Alderson Opie

Amelia Alderson Opie

12 November 1769 – 2 December 1853 (~84)
19 live poems · English

Amelia Alderson Opie entered the world on a crisp November day in 1769, born into the bustling heart of Norwich, that ancient cathedral city pulsing with intellectual and radical energy. The only child of Dr. James Alderson, a respected physician known for his generosity to the poor and his progressive views, and his wife Amelia Briggs, she arrived on November 12, destined to weave her own vibrant thread into the tap…

“Nor have I had a misgiving, but feel so calm and satisfied, that I am convinced I have done right; and I feel now utterly cast for comfort, support, and guidance, on the Searcher of hearts.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow

In time

Ada Cambridge
Amelia Alderson Opie
1769 1926
They overlapped for 10 years (1844–1853). When Ada Cambridge was born, Amelia Alderson Opie was about 75. Ada Cambridge was about 9 when Amelia Alderson Opie died.

On the map

About 63 km separate St Germans, Norfolk, England from Norwich, 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

woman

Ada Cambridge: st germans, norfolk, george frederick cross, the retrospect, hymns on the litany, hymns on the holy communion, up the murray, a marked man. Amelia Alderson Opie: norwich, john opie, william godwin, mary wollstonecraft, the dangers of coquetry, the father and daughter, adelaide, adeline mowbray.

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.

Despair
Ada Cambridge
83% love
Compare
Stanzas of Sorrow
Amelia Alderson Opie
Despair
Ada Cambridge
79% love
Compare
When the Glare of Day Is Past
Amelia Alderson Opie
Despair
Ada Cambridge
79% love
Compare
Alas! Alas! I Can't Forget
Amelia Alderson Opie
Despair
Ada Cambridge
78% life, love
Compare
Go, Youth Beloved, in Distant Glades
Amelia Alderson Opie
Despair
Ada Cambridge
78%
Compare
Dream of Soft Delight
Amelia Alderson Opie
Craven-Heart
Ada Cambridge
78% life, self
Compare
Let Not Sorrow Cloud Thy Brow
Amelia Alderson Opie

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ada Cambridge: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Amelia Alderson Opie: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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