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 Craven Elizabeth Craven

Poet B

Charlotte Smith Charlotte Smith
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 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
Elizabeth Craven

Elizabeth Craven

17 December 1750 – 13 January 1828 (~78)
1 live poem · English

Elizabeth Craven, later Elizabeth, Margravine of Anspach, was born Elizabeth Berkeley on 17 December 1750, probably at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, and died in Naples on 13 January 1828. She lived with unusual visibility across the later eighteenth century and the opening decades of the nineteenth: aristocrat, wife and mother, theatrical author, poet, travel writer, correspondent, salon hostess, political obse…

“Beside curiosity, my friends will in these Letters see at least for some time where the real Lady Craven has been, and where she is to be found.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Joy, Peace
Charlotte Smith

Charlotte Smith

4 May 1749 – 28 October 1806 (~57)
7 live poems · English

Charlotte Smith was born Charlotte Turner in London on 4 May 1749 and died at Tilford, near Farnham in Surrey, on 28 October 1806. During her lifetime she was known not only as a poet but as one of the most productive and commercially important writers in Britain. She published poetry, novels, children’s books, translations, and educational works while sustaining a large family and enduring a marriage, a debt crisis,…

“The indulgence with which the public has received these poems has encouraged the author to offer them again.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

Elizabeth Craven
Charlotte Smith
1749 1828
They overlapped for 57 years (1750–1806). When Elizabeth Craven was born, Charlotte Smith was about 1. Elizabeth Craven was about 56 when Charlotte Smith died.

On the map

About 143 km separate Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, England from Stoke next Guildford, Surrey, England. Both have ground in England.

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

social woman

Elizabeth Craven: berkeley castle, william craven, margrave of ansbach, a journey through the crimea to constantinople, the sleep-walker, the miniature picture, the soldier of fortune, whig aristocracy. Charlotte Smith: london, elegiac sonnets, the old manor house, the emigrants, nicholas turner, benjamin smith, french revolution, georgian england.

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.

I thank thee God, that I have lived
Elizabeth Craven
77%
Compare
To the Muse
Charlotte Smith
I thank thee God, that I have lived
Elizabeth Craven
74% world, pain, beauty
Compare
Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes
Charlotte Smith
I thank thee God, that I have lived
Elizabeth Craven
73% life
Compare
The Dead Beggar
Charlotte Smith
I thank thee God, that I have lived
Elizabeth Craven
70%
Compare
To a Nightingale
Charlotte Smith
I thank thee God, that I have lived
Elizabeth Craven
68% world, beauty
Compare
The Glow-Worm
Charlotte Smith

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Craven: Spirituality, Joy, Peace. Charlotte Smith: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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