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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens
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 69% Poems 89% Blended 78%
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
Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens

2 October 1879 – 2 August 1955 (~76)
8 live poems · English

Wallace Stevens stands as one of the most enigmatic and profound voices in American poetry—a philosophical poet who balanced a successful corporate career with the creation of some of the most intellectually challenging and aesthetically innovative verse of the 20th century. His poetry, characterized by its luxuriant language, philosophical depth, and preoccupation with the imagination's relationship to reality, cont…

“After one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow

In time

Robert Louis Stevenson
Wallace Stevens
1850 1955
They overlapped for 16 years (1879–1894). When Wallace Stevens was born, Robert Louis Stevenson was about 29. Wallace Stevens was about 15 when Robert Louis Stevenson died.

On the map

About 5,390 km separate Edinburgh, Scotland from Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. 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

imagination

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. Wallace Stevens: reading, pennsylvania, harvard university, george santayana, harmonium, sunday morning, the emperor of ice-cream, thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird, the snow man.

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.

Romance
Robert Louis Stevenson
83% love, nature, romance
Compare
Re-statement of Romance
Wallace Stevens
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
80% death
Compare
The Death of a Soldier
Wallace Stevens
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
75% death
Compare
Another Weeping Woman
Wallace Stevens
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
74%
Compare
Invective Against Swans
Wallace Stevens
Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson
73%
Compare
Re-statement of Romance
Wallace Stevens
The Vagabond
Robert Louis Stevenson
72% world
Compare
Invective Against Swans
Wallace Stevens

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. Wallace Stevens: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow.

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