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

William Bell Scott William Bell Scott

Poet B

Charles Wolfe Charles Wolfe
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 64% Blended 64%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Bell Scott

William Bell Scott

12 September 1811 – 22 November 1890 (~79)
3 live poems · English

William Bell Scott was born in Edinburgh on 12 September 1811, into a family in which art was both a livelihood and an atmosphere. He was the eldest surviving son of Robert Scott, an engraver of considerable skill and a man of strong intellectual interests, and Ross Bell Scott. The household was not wealthy, but it was rich in artistic ambition, professional discipline, books, conversation, and the practical awarenes…

“We often say in the battle of life as in the game of chess—Had I only played this, and not that!”

Neighbourhood: Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Scottish Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
Charles Wolfe

Charles Wolfe

14 December 1791 – 21 February 1823 (~32)
1 live poem · English

Charles Wolfe, born on 14 December 1791 and dead on 21 February 1823, occupies a small but secure territory in the history of poetry written in English. His name is inseparable from “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna,” a poem so concise, grave, and memorable that it has long outlived the circumstances of its composition and, in many readers’ minds, eclipsed the life of the man who wrote it. For much of the n…

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Irish Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair

In time

William Bell Scott
Charles Wolfe
1791 1890
They overlapped for 13 years (1811–1823). When William Bell Scott was born, Charles Wolfe was about 20. William Bell Scott was about 12 when Charles Wolfe died.

On the map

About 370 km separate Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom from Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare, Ireland. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

William Bell Scott only

Charles Wolfe only

From the biographies

William Bell Scott: edinburgh, david scott, paul's letters to his kinsfolk, the onward tide, newcastle upon tyne, trevelyan family, wallington hall, trustees' academy. Charles Wolfe: blackhall, county kildare, theobald wolfe, frances wolfe, the burial of sir john moore after corunna, trinity college dublin, anglo-irish ascendancy, peninsular war.

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.

Mare Serenitatis
William Bell Scott
72%
Compare
To Mary
Charles Wolfe
Age
William Bell Scott
72%
Compare
To Mary
Charles Wolfe
Seeking Forgetfulness
William Bell Scott
69%
Compare
To Mary
Charles Wolfe

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Bell Scott: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality. Charles Wolfe: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

Skip to main content