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 Browning Robert Browning

Poet B

Thomas Moore Thomas Moore
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 66% Poems 90% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert Browning

Robert Browning

7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889 (~77)
19 live poems · English

Robert Browning was born on 7 May 1812 at Southampton Cottage, Camberwell, then a semi-rural district south of London, and died on 12 December 1889 in Venice. Few English poets have combined such audacity of intellect, dramatic energy, moral curiosity, and technical resourcefulness. During his lifetime he moved from the position of a puzzling, frequently mocked young writer to that of a revered elder of Victorian let…

“All you gain by travel is the discovery that you have gained nothing, and have done rightly in trusting to your innate ideas—or not rightly in distrusting them, as the case may be.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore

28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852 (~73)
31 live poems · English

Thomas Moore, born in Dublin on 28 May 1779 and dead at Sloperton Cottage, Wiltshire, on 25 February 1852, occupied an unusual and influential place in the literary culture of the nineteenth century. He was at once a poet, lyricist, singer, editor, biographer, satirist, traveller, social performer, and public Irishman in an age when Irish identity could be politically dangerous, commercially useful, emotionally charg…

“During the prevalence of the Penal Code, the music of Ireland was made to share in the fate of its people.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Irish Poets, Love Poets, Poet-Musicians, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow

In time

Robert Browning
Thomas Moore
1779 1889
They overlapped for 41 years (1812–1852). When Robert Browning was born, Thomas Moore was about 33. Robert Browning was about 40 when Thomas Moore died.

On the map

About 469 km separate Camberwell, London, England from Dublin, Ireland. 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 Browning: southampton cottage, venice, dramatic monologue, elizabeth barrett browning, pauline: a fragment of a confession, my last duchess, porphyria's lover, pippa passes. Thomas Moore: sloperton cottage, irish melodies, the minstrel boy, the last rose of summer, believe me, if all those endearing young charms, trinity college dublin, samuel whyte, prince of wales.

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.

The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
85% love
Compare
One Dear Smile
Thomas Moore
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
84% love
Compare
Then, fare thee well (Old English Air)
Thomas Moore
The Lost Mistress
Robert Browning
83% love
Compare
Do not say that life is waning
Thomas Moore
You'll love Me yet
Robert Browning
82% love, beloved
Compare
Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms
Thomas Moore
You'll love Me yet
Robert Browning
82% love, beloved
Compare
Do not say that life is waning
Thomas Moore

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Robert Browning: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder. Thomas Moore: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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