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

Elizabeth Devereux Elizabeth Devereux

Poet B

A. Mary F. Robinson A. Mary F. Robinson
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 86% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Elizabeth Devereux

Elizabeth Devereux

12 March 1934 – 29 July 2023 (~89)
2 live poems · English

Elizabeth Devereux was born on 12 March 1934 in Singapore, then a British colonial port whose commercial prosperity, cultural variety, and precarious imperial order formed the background of her earliest years. She died on 29 July 2023, aged eighty-nine, after a life that crossed continents, social worlds, and ideas of what a literary life ought to look like. Though she did not achieve conventional public recognition…

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
A. Mary F. Robinson

A. Mary F. Robinson

27 February 1857 – 9 February 1944 (~87)
12 live poems · English

Agnes Mary Frances Robinson, who published most often as A. Mary F. Robinson and became successively known in France as Madame Darmesteter and Madame Duclaux, was born on 27 February 1857 in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, and died in Aurillac, France, on 9 February 1944. Her unusually long life carried her from the high Victorian age into the Second World War; her writing career connected English Romantic and aestheti…

“The chapel of the Minor Poet may be too small to admit the crowd; it may be thronged when three or four are gathered together. None the less, it has its use and place.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair

In time

Elizabeth Devereux
A. Mary F. Robinson
1857 2023
They overlapped for 11 years (1934–1944). When Elizabeth Devereux was born, A. Mary F. Robinson was about 77. Elizabeth Devereux was about 10 when A. Mary F. Robinson died.

On the map

About 10,923 km separate Singapore from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. 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

Elizabeth Devereux: singapore, second world war, japanese invasion, boarding school, royal air force pilot, seville, unpublished poems, displacement. A. Mary F. Robinson: leamington spa, aurillac, madame darmesteter, madame duclaux, a handful of honeysuckle, the new arcadia, emily brontë, james darmesteter.

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 Wealth of Nothing
Elizabeth Devereux
81%
Compare
Treasure Song
A. Mary F. Robinson
Invisible
Elizabeth Devereux
75%
Compare
Neurasthenia
A. Mary F. Robinson
Invisible
Elizabeth Devereux
75% life
Compare
The Road Leading Nowhere
A. Mary F. Robinson
Invisible
Elizabeth Devereux
75%
Compare
Writing History
A. Mary F. Robinson
Invisible
Elizabeth Devereux
74% life
Compare
The Widow
A. Mary F. Robinson
Invisible
Elizabeth Devereux
74%
Compare
Maidens
A. Mary F. Robinson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Devereux: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace. A. Mary F. Robinson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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