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

Sir Henry Taylor Sir Henry Taylor

Poet B

Rudyard Kipling Rudyard Kipling
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 54% Poems 73% Blended 63%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir Henry Taylor

Sir Henry Taylor

18 October 1800 – 27 March 1886 (~86)
2 live poems · English

Sir Henry Taylor occupies one of the more curious niches in nineteenth-century English letters: a poet who spent his working life not in garrets or universities but behind the desk of a government office, quietly shaping the administration of Britain's colonies while writing, in his spare hours, verse dramas that made him, for a brief and dazzling season, one of the most celebrated writers in the land. He was born on…

“For no syren did ever so charm the ear of the listener, as the listening ear has charmed the soul of the syren.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Sorrow, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936 (~71)
17 live poems · English

Rudyard Kipling was born Joseph Rudyard Kipling on December 30, 1865, in the bustling colonial port of Bombay, British India, a city that would forever pulse through his veins like the monsoon rains and the clamor of its streets. He died on January 18, 1936, in London, England, at the age of seventy, his body laid to rest in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey after a life that spanned the height of the British Empire…

“There are men who devote their skill to producing things and expressing ideas for which the public has no present need.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sir Henry Taylor
Rudyard Kipling
1800 1936
They overlapped for 22 years (1865–1886). When Rudyard Kipling was born, Sir Henry Taylor was about 65. Rudyard Kipling was about 21 when Sir Henry Taylor died.
Sir Henry Taylor in history Rudyard Kipling in history Years they were given

On the map

About 7,290 km separate Bishop Middleham, County Durham, England from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Both have ground in London.

Sir Henry Taylor

Rudyard Kipling

Open both on the History Atlas

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

self social life

Sir Henry Taylor only

heart elena maid wife beauty loss sickness illness soul

Rudyard Kipling only

empire soldiers imperial soldier military power world colonial tommy love duty india

From the biographies

colonial

Sir Henry Taylor: bishop middleham, county durham, george taylor, sir james stephen, philip van artevelde, isaac comnenus, edwin the fair, the virgin widow. Rudyard Kipling: bombay, westminster abbey, the jungle book, just so stories, kim, gunga din, the light that failed, caroline balestier.

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.

Elena's Song
Sir Henry Taylor
69% social
Compare
Mary, Pity Women!
Rudyard Kipling
Elena's Song
Sir Henry Taylor
68% life
Compare
The Explanation
Rudyard Kipling
Soft be the voice
Sir Henry Taylor
68%
Compare
Mary, Pity Women!
Rudyard Kipling
Elena's Song
Sir Henry Taylor
66%
Compare
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling
Soft be the voice
Sir Henry Taylor
66%
Compare
An Astrologer's Song
Rudyard Kipling
Soft be the voice
Sir Henry Taylor
66%
Compare
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
1865 Publication of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'
1865 Surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox
1865 Thirteenth Amendment Ratified
1868 Fourteenth Amendment Ratified
1868 The Helium Discovery Eclipse
1869 Completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad
1870 Hardy Meets Emma Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall

Sir Henry Taylor

1824 Clerkship at the Colonial Office
1825 Death of Siblings
1834 Publication of 'Philip van Artevelde'
1839 Marriage to Mary Anne
1842 Publication of 'A Sicilian Story'
1849 Publication of 'The Statesman'
1868 Knighthood
1884 Final Publication: 'The Fall of Jerusalem'

Rudyard Kipling

1881 Kipling's First Published Work
1892 Marriage to Caroline Balestier
1894 Publication of 'The Jungle Book'
1896 Kipling's Return to England
1899 Death of Daughter Josephine
1901 Publication of 'Kim'
1907 Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
1914 Kipling's Involvement in World War I

Emotional landscapes

Sir Henry Taylor: Tenderness, Sorrow, Spirituality. Rudyard Kipling: Irony, Sorrow, Longing.

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