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

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson

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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71% Poems 81% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson

13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894 (~44)
4 live poems · English

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, into a family whose public achievements seemed to prescribe his future long before he could choose one for himself. His father, Thomas Stevenson, was a distinguished civil engineer and designer of lighthouses, heir to a formidable Scottish professional dynasty. His mother, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, came from another prominent family; her fat…

“Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Joy, Wonder
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…

“It may be more important that men should be helped to think than that they should be helped to live.”

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

In time

Robert Louis Stevenson
Rudyard Kipling
1850 1936
They overlapped for 30 years (1865–1894). When Rudyard Kipling was born, Robert Louis Stevenson was about 15. Rudyard Kipling was about 29 when Robert Louis Stevenson died.

On the map

About 7,400 km separate Edinburgh, Scotland from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. 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

Robert Louis Stevenson: edinburgh, thomas stevenson, fanny van de grift osbourne, strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde, treasure island, the sea cook, an inland voyage, travels with a donkey in the cévennes. 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.

Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
71% death, life
Compare
The Explanation
Rudyard Kipling
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
70%
Compare
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
70%
Compare
The Liner, She’s a Lady
Rudyard Kipling
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
70%
Compare
Troopin'
Rudyard Kipling
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
70%
Compare
The Last of the Light Brigade
Rudyard Kipling
Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
69%
Compare
The Widow at Windsor
Rudyard Kipling

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Robert Louis Stevenson: Peace, Joy, Wonder. Rudyard Kipling: Irony, Sorrow, Longing.

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