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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Thomas Babington Macaulay Thomas Babington Macaulay

Poet B

Barry Cornwall Barry Cornwall
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 70% Poems 84% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Babington Macaulay

Thomas Babington Macaulay

25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859 (~59)
2 live poems · English

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born on 25 October 1800 at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire and died on 28 December 1859 at Kensington, London. He was at once a poet, essayist, parliamentarian, colonial administrator, historian, reviewer, and one of the most commanding prose stylists in nineteenth-century English. To modern readers his name often summons the grand certainty of Victorian “Whig history,” the tendency to…

“In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Barry Cornwall

Barry Cornwall

21 November 1787 – 5 October 1874 (~87)
10 live poems · English

Bryan Waller Procter, known to generations of readers by the literary name Barry Cornwall, was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, on 21 November 1787, and died in London on 5 October 1874. He belonged to that broad, fascinating company of early nineteenth-century writers who stood close to the great Romantic generation without ever wholly entering its innermost circle. He was not a poet of Byron’s volcanic self-dramatization,…

“I bought a Shakespeare, and entered into a world beyond my own.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness

In time

Thomas Babington Macaulay
Barry Cornwall
1787 1874
They overlapped for 60 years (1800–1859). When Thomas Babington Macaulay was born, Barry Cornwall was about 13. Barry Cornwall was about 72 when Thomas Babington Macaulay died.

On the map

About 132 km separate Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, England from Leeds, Yorkshire, 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

Thomas Babington Macaulay: rothley temple, leicestershire, edinburgh review, lays of ancient rome, whig history, trinity college, chancellor’s gold medal, john milton. Barry Cornwall: leeds, charles lamb, adelaide anne procter, dramatic scenes and other poems, the life of edmund kean, english songs, the sea, touch us gently, time!.

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.

A Jacobite's Epitaph
Thomas Babington Macaulay
80% history
Compare
History of a Life
Barry Cornwall
A Jacobite's Epitaph
Thomas Babington Macaulay
79%
Compare
Peace! what do tears avail?
Barry Cornwall
A Jacobite's Epitaph
Thomas Babington Macaulay
76%
Compare
Sit Down, Sad Soul
Barry Cornwall
The Last Buccaneer
Thomas Babington Macaulay
76% world, freedom
Compare
Song of the Sea
Barry Cornwall
A Jacobite's Epitaph
Thomas Babington Macaulay
72%
Compare
Love Me if I Live
Barry Cornwall
A Jacobite's Epitaph
Thomas Babington Macaulay
69%
Compare
Song of the Sea
Barry Cornwall

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Babington Macaulay: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Barry Cornwall: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness.

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