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

Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë

Poet B

Alice Meynell Alice Meynell
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 68% Poems 88% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë

21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855 (~39)
7 live poems · English

Charlotte Brontë was born on 21 April 1816 at Thornton, near Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the third surviving child of Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë. She died on 31 March 1855, not yet thirty-nine years old, after creating a body of work that transformed the English novel. Though chiefly celebrated as a novelist, she began as a poet, wrote poetry throughout her life, and brought a poet’s inten…

“I would always rather be happy than dignified, and I ran a real risk of being thought ridiculous.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell

11 October 1847 – 27 November 1922 (~75)
3 live poems · English

Alice Meynell, born Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson on 11 October 1847 and dead on 27 November 1922, was one of the most distinctive English writers to work across the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. A poet of exquisite compression, an essayist of alert and sensuous intelligence, a critic, editor, Catholic public intellectual, and campaigner for women’s suffrage, she made a literary identity that cannot be r…

“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness

In time

Charlotte Brontë
Alice Meynell
1816 1922
They overlapped for 9 years (1847–1855). When Alice Meynell was born, Charlotte Brontë was about 31. Alice Meynell was about 8 when Charlotte Brontë died.

On the map

About 279 km separate Thornton, Yorkshire, England from Barnes, London, England. 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

women

Charlotte Brontë: thornton, bradford, jane eyre, villette, patrick brontë, maria branwell brontë, angrian chronicles, gondal. Alice Meynell: edwardian, wilfrid meynell, preludes, renouncement, catholicism, francis thompson, the colour of life, the lady poverty.

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.

Watching and Wishing
Charlotte Brontë
80% beloved, love
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
When Thou Sleepest
Charlotte Brontë
78%
Compare
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Charlotte Brontë
77%
Compare
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
When Thou Sleepest
Charlotte Brontë
76%
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
Watching and Wishing
Charlotte Brontë
76%
Compare
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
Parting
Charlotte Brontë
75% presence
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Charlotte Brontë: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder. Alice Meynell: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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