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

Lady Anne Lindsay Lady Anne Lindsay

Poet B

Jean Elliot Jean Elliot
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% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Lady Anne Lindsay

Lady Anne Lindsay

8 December 1750 – 6 May 1825 (~75)
1 live poem · English

Lady Anne Lindsay, later Lady Anne Barnard, was born on 8 December 1750 at Balcarres in Fife, Scotland, and died on 6 May 1825 in London. She is remembered above all as the author of “Auld Robin Gray,” one of the most affecting and durable songs in the Scottish literary tradition. Yet the ballad’s extraordinary afterlife has sometimes reduced its maker to a name attached to a single lyric. Her life was considerably l…

“The only proof of madness that the John Bulls find in me is my being contented with every thing as I find it.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Jean Elliot

Jean Elliot

April 1727 – 29 March 1805 (~78)
1 live poem · English

Jean Elliot, often called Jane Elliot in later accounts, was born in April 1727 at Minto House in Teviotdale, Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders, and died on 29 March 1805. She is remembered above all for “The Flowers of the Forest,” one of the most moving lyrics in the Scottish tradition. The apparent smallness of her surviving body of work has sometimes obscured the scale of her achievement. Elliot did not leav…

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Folk & Ballad Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

Lady Anne Lindsay
Jean Elliot
1727 1825
They overlapped for 56 years (1750–1805). When Lady Anne Lindsay was born, Jean Elliot was about 23. Lady Anne Lindsay was about 55 when Jean Elliot died.

On the map

About 83 km separate Balcarres, Fife, Scotland from Minto House, Teviotdale, Roxburghshire, Scotland. 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

edinburgh scottish

Lady Anne Lindsay: balcarres, cape colony, auld robin gray, james lindsay, andrew barnard, scottish ballad tradition, edinburgh, colonial official. Jean Elliot: teviotdale, the flowers of the forest, scottish borders, jacobite rising, sir gilbert elliot, edinburgh, scottish enlightenment, border gentry.

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.

Auld Robin Gray
Lady Anne Lindsay
75% world
Compare
A Lament for Flodden
Jean Elliot

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Lady Anne Lindsay: Despair, Sorrow, Longing. Jean Elliot: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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