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

Ernest Dowson Ernest Dowson
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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 70% Poems 87% Blended 77%
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…

“Nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions.”

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

Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900 (~33)
18 live poems · English

In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to 1900—produced poetry of such delicate melancholy and exquisite craftsmanship that it continues to ca…

“I smoke — smoke — smoke — read some — & think not at all.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

William Johnson Cory
Ernest Dowson
1823 1900
They overlapped for 26 years (1867–1892). When Ernest Dowson was born, William Johnson Cory was about 44. Ernest Dowson was about 25 when William Johnson Cory died.

On the map

About 366 km separate Great Torrington, Devon, England from Canterbury, 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

William Johnson Cory: great torrington, eton college, king's college cambridge, ionica, mimnermus in church, heraclitus, the two captains, a lesson. Ernest Dowson: lee, kent, rhymers' club, william butler yeats, adelaide foltinowicz, verses, non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno cynarae, vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam, decadent movement.

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
84% love, life
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
Heraclitus
William Johnson Cory
82%
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
81% death, love, life
Compare
Vitae Summa Brevis
Ernest Dowson
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
80% death, dead, life
Compare
In a Breton Cemetery
Ernest Dowson
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
79% love, life
Compare
Amantium Irae
Ernest Dowson
If I should die to-night
William Johnson Cory
79% love
Compare
Exchanges
Ernest Dowson

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. Ernest Dowson: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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