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

J.M. Synge J.M. Synge

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 65% Poems 88% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
J.M. Synge

J.M. Synge

16 April 1871 – 24 March 1909 (~38)
6 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Irish literature, few figures cast as long a shadow as John Millington Synge, a man who compressed into his brief thirty-seven years a literary output that would reshape the very notion of Irish dramatic art. Born on April 16, 1871, into the comfortable Protestant Anglo-Irish gentry of County Dublin, Synge would grow to become one of Ireland's most celebrated and controversial playwrights, creating…

“In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple, and there should be no writing that is not a pleasure to the ear.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Irish Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow
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 burned many copybooks which contained fugitive pieces of my own because I thought it were better for them to die young and be happy than live to be reviled.”

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

In time

J.M. Synge
Francis Ledwidge
1871 1917
They overlapped for 23 years (1887–1909). When Francis Ledwidge was born, J.M. Synge was about 16. Francis Ledwidge was about 22 when J.M. Synge died.

On the map

About 44 km separate Dublin, Ireland from Slane, County Meath, Ireland. Shared ground: Ireland.

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

irish

J.M. Synge: county dublin, trinity college dublin, the aran islands, william butler yeats, hodgkin's disease, in the shadow of the glen, riders to the sea, the playboy of the western world. 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.

The Passing of the Shee
J.M. Synge
83% irish, myth
Compare
Jeu d'Esprit
Francis Ledwidge
The Passing of the Shee
J.M. Synge
81% irish, world
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
The Passing of the Shee
J.M. Synge
77% world
Compare
To a Sparrow
Francis Ledwidge
On a Birthday
J.M. Synge
75% irish
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
On a Birthday
J.M. Synge
74% irish
Compare
Jeu d'Esprit
Francis Ledwidge
Beg-Innish
J.M. Synge
74% irish
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

J.M. Synge: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow. Francis Ledwidge: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder.

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