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

Matthew Arnold Matthew Arnold

Poet B

Arthur Symons Arthur Symons
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 75% Poems 87% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold

24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888 (~66)
12 live poems · English

Matthew Arnold was born on 24 December 1822 at Laleham, Middlesex, a village beside the Thames, and died suddenly on 15 April 1888 at Liverpool. He became one of the defining English voices of the Victorian age: a poet of haunting melancholy, a critic who sought standards of excellence amid cultural confusion, an educational civil servant with an unusually broad public vision, and a controversial commentator on relig…

“Literature is a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Arthur Symons

Arthur Symons

28 February 1865 – 22 January 1945 (~80)
23 live poems · English

Arthur Symons was born on 28 February 1865 at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales, into a household shaped by religious discipline, frequent movement, and intellectual aspiration. He was the son of the Reverend Arthur Symons, a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and Mary Ann Symons. His father’s ministry required the family to move from place to place, and the boy’s childhood was therefore less rooted in one local communit…

“One's nature no longer radiates freely from its own centre; the centre itself is shifted, is put outside one's self.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder

In time

Matthew Arnold
Arthur Symons
1822 1945
They overlapped for 24 years (1865–1888). When Arthur Symons was born, Matthew Arnold was about 43. Arthur Symons was about 23 when Matthew Arnold died.

On the map

About 316 km separate Laleham, Middlesex, England from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. 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

Matthew Arnold: laleham, rugby school, thomas arnold, frances lucy wightman, the forsaken merman, sohrab and rustum, the scholar-gipsy, empedocles on etna. Arthur Symons: milford haven, wales, reverend arthur symons, days and nights, silhouettes, london literary life, rhymers' club, w. b. yeats.

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.

Youth and Calm
Matthew Arnold
81%
Compare
For a Picture of Watteau
Arthur Symons
Despondency
Matthew Arnold
81% light
Compare
Quest
Arthur Symons
Youth and Calm
Matthew Arnold
81% life
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold
80% love, beauty
Compare
L'Amour Par Terre
Arthur Symons
Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold
80%
Compare
Quest
Arthur Symons
Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold
80% world, love
Compare
Love in Dreams
Arthur Symons

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Matthew Arnold: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Arthur Symons: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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