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

William Schwenck Gilbert William Schwenck Gilbert

Poet B

J.M. Synge J.M. Synge
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 57% Poems 80% Blended 68%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Schwenck Gilbert

William Schwenck Gilbert

18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911 (~75)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Victorian literature, few figures present such a delightful paradox as William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911). Here was a man who could craft lyrics of sublime wit and devastating social commentary, yet whose temperament was notoriously prickly and contentious. A writer who created some of the most beloved comic operas in the English language while maintaining a reputation as one of London's most dif…

“I know of no pleasure so lasting as that of having done a good turn to a fellow creature.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Despair, Fear
J.M. Synge

J.M. Synge

16 April 1871 – 24 March 1909 (~38)
6 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Irish literature, few figures cast as long a shadow as John Millington Synge, a man who compressed into his brief thirty-seven years a literary output that would reshape the very notion of Irish dramatic art. Born on April 16, 1871, into the comfortable Protestant Anglo-Irish gentry of County Dublin, Synge would grow to become one of Ireland's most celebrated and controversial playwrights, creating…

“The poetry of the drama is not in the words, but in the situation.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Irish Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow

In time

William Schwenck Gilbert
J.M. Synge
1836 1911
They overlapped for 39 years (1871–1909). When J.M. Synge was born, William Schwenck Gilbert was about 35. William Schwenck Gilbert was about 73 when J.M. Synge died.

On the map

About 464 km separate 17 Southampton Street, The Strand, London from Dublin, Ireland. 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

William Schwenck Gilbert: southampton, lucy agnes turner, trial by jury, the sorcerer, h.m.s. pinafore, the mikado, the bab ballads, richard d'oyly carte. J.M. Synge: county dublin, trinity college dublin, the aran islands, william butler yeats, hodgkin's disease, in the shadow of the glen, riders to the sea, the playboy of the western world.

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.

Only a Dancing Girl
William Schwenck Gilbert
74%
Compare
The Passing of the Shee
J.M. Synge
Only a Dancing Girl
William Schwenck Gilbert
71%
Compare
Beg-Innish
J.M. Synge
The Yarn of the "Nancy Bell"
William Schwenck Gilbert
70% survival
Compare
I've thirty months
J.M. Synge
Only a Dancing Girl
William Schwenck Gilbert
68% social
Compare
A Question
J.M. Synge
Only a Dancing Girl
William Schwenck Gilbert
67% social
Compare
I've thirty months
J.M. Synge
The Yarn of the "Nancy Bell"
William Schwenck Gilbert
67%
Compare
A Question
J.M. Synge

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Schwenck Gilbert: Irony, Despair, Fear. J.M. Synge: Longing, Wonder, Sorrow.

Skip to main content