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 Johnson Cory William Johnson Cory

Poet B

William Bell Scott William Bell Scott
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% Poems 82% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Johnson Cory

William Johnson Cory

9 January 1823 – 11 June 1892 (~69)
2 live poems · English

William Johnson Cory, born William Johnson on 9 January 1823 and dead on 11 June 1892, occupies an unusual but durable place in English literary history. He was never a major public poet in the Victorian manner of Tennyson or Browning; he published relatively little, lived much of his life within the secluded world of elite education, and became known to many readers through a small collection rather than a grand car…

“But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness
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…

“Writing, without something urgently requiring to be said, ends in imitation, restoration, selection.”

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

In time

William Johnson Cory
William Bell Scott
1811 1892
They overlapped for 68 years (1823–1890). When William Johnson Cory was born, William Bell Scott was about 12. William Johnson Cory was about 67 when William Bell Scott died.

On the map

About 559 km separate Great Torrington, Devon, England from Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. 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

history

William Johnson Cory: great torrington, eton college, king's college cambridge, ionica, mimnermus in church, heraclitus, the two captains, a lesson. William Bell Scott: edinburgh, david scott, paul's letters to his kinsfolk, the onward tide, newcastle upon tyne, trevelyan family, wallington hall, trustees' academy.

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.

If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
75% life
Compare
Age
William Bell Scott
Heraclitus
William Johnson Cory
73%
Compare
Age
William Bell Scott
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
72% life
Compare
Mare Serenitatis
William Bell Scott
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
71% life
Compare
Seeking Forgetfulness
William Bell Scott
Heraclitus
William Johnson Cory
70%
Compare
Seeking Forgetfulness
William Bell Scott
Heraclitus
William Johnson Cory
69%
Compare
Mare Serenitatis
William Bell Scott

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Johnson Cory: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness. William Bell Scott: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality.

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