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

John Keble John Keble

Poet B

Robert Bridges Robert Bridges
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Keble

John Keble

25 April 1792 – 29 March 1866 (~74)
1 live poem · English

John Keble was born on 25 April 1792 at Fairford in Gloucestershire, into a household where religion, learning, family affection, and the rhythms of rural England were closely joined. He would become one of the most widely read poets of nineteenth-century Britain, a distinguished Oxford scholar, a parish priest of unusual devotion, and a formative figure in the movement that sought to recover the Catholic and sacrame…

“Once you make up your mind never to stand waiting and hesitating when your conscience tells you what you ought to do, and you have got the key to every blessing that a sinner can reasonably hope for.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality
Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges

23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930 (~86)
4 live poems · English

Robert Seymour Bridges was born on 23 October 1844 at Walmer, near Deal in Kent, into a prosperous and cultivated English family whose security gave him both educational opportunity and, eventually, the independence to pursue literature without needing to earn his living from it. He was the fourth son of John Thomas Bridges and Harriet Elizabeth Bridges. His father had served in the navy and later held administrative…

“It is difficult to dissociate the quality of Diction from two other matters, namely, Properties and Keeping.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder

In time

John Keble
Robert Bridges
1792 1930
They overlapped for 23 years (1844–1866). When Robert Bridges was born, John Keble was about 52. Robert Bridges was about 22 when John Keble died.

On the map

About 227 km separate Fairford, Gloucestershire, England from Walmer, Kent, 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

From the biographies

oxford

John Keble: fairford, the christian year, oxford movement, national apostasy, john henry newman, praelectiones academicae, hursley, sarah maule keble. Robert Bridges: walmer, eton college, corpus christi college, gerard manley hopkins, the growth of love, london snow, st bartholomew's hospital, hospital for sick children.

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.

November
John Keble
77% world, life
Compare
Winter Nightfall
Robert Bridges
November
John Keble
76% life
Compare
Clear and Gentle Stream
Robert Bridges
November
John Keble
69%
Compare
Wooing
Robert Bridges
November
John Keble
68% nature, world
Compare
The Windmill
Robert Bridges

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Keble: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality. Robert Bridges: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder.

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