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

Manuel Machado Manuel Machado

Poet B

Arthur Symons Arthur Symons
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 63% Poems 81% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
Manuel Machado

Manuel Machado

29 August 1874 – 19 January 1947 (~73)
4 live poems · Spanish

Manuel Machado was born on August 29, 1874, in the heart of Seville, Spain, at number 20 on San Pedro Mártir Street, into a household that pulsed with the rhythms of Andalusian folklore and intellectual curiosity. His arrival came at two-thirty in the morning, under the warm embrace of a city where orange blossoms scented the air and the distant echo of guitars hinted at the deep songs that would later infuse his poe…

“I see no path for the artist other than to cultivate his personality with the utmost care and improve it without cease.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Longing
Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 – 22 January 1945 (~80)
23 live poems · English

Arthur Symons was born on 28 February 1865 at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, into a household shaped by religious discipline, frequent movement, and intellectual aspiration. He was the son of the Reverend Arthur Symons, a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and Mary Ann Symons. His father’s ministry required the family to move from place to place, and the boy’s childhood was therefore less rooted in one local communit…

“Symbolism, as seen in the writers of our day, would have no value if it were not seen also, under one disguise or another, in every great imaginative writer.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder

In time

Manuel Machado
Arthur Symons
1865 1947
They overlapped for 72 years (1874–1945). When Manuel Machado was born, Arthur Symons was about 9. Manuel Machado was about 71 when Arthur Symons died.

On the map

About 1,594 km separate Seville, Spain from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. 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.

Shared

From the biographies

Manuel Machado: seville, andalusian folklore, antonio machado álvarez, demófilo, generation of '98, paris, paul verlaine, alma. Arthur Symons: milford haven, wales, reverend arthur symons, days and nights, silhouettes, london literary life, rhymers' club, w. b. yeats.

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.

Adelfos
Manuel Machado
76% desire, beauty
Compare
In an Omnibus
Arthur Symons
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
76% desire
Compare
Quest
Arthur Symons
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
75% self, beauty
Compare
Maquillage
Arthur Symons
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
75%
Compare
In the Oratory
Arthur Symons
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
75% desire, beauty
Compare
Modern Beauty
Arthur Symons
Adelfos
Manuel Machado
75% love, beauty
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Manuel Machado: Joy, Sensuality, Longing. Arthur Symons: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

Skip to main content