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

Arthur Hugh Clough Arthur Hugh Clough

Poet B

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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 76% Poems 89% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Arthur Hugh Clough

Arthur Hugh Clough

1 January 1819 – 13 November 1861 (~42)
12 live poems · English

Arthur Hugh Clough, born in Liverpool on 1 January 1819 and dead in Florence on 13 November 1861, occupies an unusual and compelling place in nineteenth-century English poetry. He was a Victorian poet, but he often sounds impatient with the assurances conventionally associated with Victorian verse: confidence in progress, confidence in religious doctrine, confidence in moral formulas, and confidence that elevated poe…

“All things become clear to me by work more than by anything else. Any kind of drudgery will help one out of the most uncommon either sentimental or speculative perplexity.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

21 October 1772 – 25 July 1834 (~62)
26 live poems · English

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in Ottery St Mary, Devon, and died on 25 July 1834 at Highgate, near London. He occupies an unusual and commanding place in English literary history: he was at once one of the makers of Romantic poetry, a revolutionary critic of Shakespeare and poetic language, a philosophical mediator between German idealism and English thought, a political journalist, a religious…

“Metaphysics is a word that you, my dear Sir, are no great friend to; but yet you will agree, that a great Poet must be, implicitly if not explicitly, a profound Metaphysician.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Arthur Hugh Clough
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1772 1861
They overlapped for 16 years (1819–1834). When Arthur Hugh Clough was born, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was about 47. Arthur Hugh Clough was about 15 when Samuel Taylor Coleridge died.
Arthur Hugh Clough in history Samuel Taylor Coleridge in history Years they were given

On the map

About 295 km separate Liverpool, England from Ottery St. Mary, Devon, England. Both have ground in England.

Arthur Hugh Clough

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Open both on the History Atlas

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

life self social hope light

Arthur Hugh Clough only

faith wind separation religious duty doubt struggle smoke waves nought loss

Samuel Taylor Coleridge only

nature world romantic love beauty mind spiritual imagination reality power body

From the biographies

religious

Arthur Hugh Clough: liverpool, florence, charleston, thomas arnold, matthew arnold, oxford movement, amours de voyage, the bothie of tober-na-vuolich. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: ottery st mary, highgate, the rime of the ancient mariner, kubla khan, christabel, biographia literaria, william wordsworth, charles lamb.

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.

Shall I decide it by a random shot?
Arthur Hugh Clough
82% self, life
Compare
Human Life
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Questioning Spirit
Arthur Hugh Clough
80% life
Compare
Human Life
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Shall I decide it by a random shot?
Arthur Hugh Clough
80% hope, life
Compare
Work Without Hope
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Say not the Struggle Nought Availeth
Arthur Hugh Clough
80%
Compare
Human Life
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Shall I decide it by a random shot?
Arthur Hugh Clough
79% hope, despair
Compare
To the Autumnal Moon
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Say not the Struggle Nought Availeth
Arthur Hugh Clough
78%
Compare
Pantisocracy
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1819 Byron Publishes Mazeppa and the First Two Cantos of Don Juan
1819 John Keats Writes 'To Autumn' Celebrating the Season's Winds
1819 Shelley Writes Ode to the West Wind
1823 Byron Joins the Greek War of Independence
1823 Publication of 'The Poems of Jeremiah Joseph Callanan'
1824 Lord Byron Arrives in Missolonghi to Lead the Greek Forces
1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction

Arthur Hugh Clough

1828 Clough's Return to England
1828 Education at Rugby School
1837 Matriculation at Balliol College
1840 Crisis of Faith
1847 Publication of 'The Latest Decalogue'
1848 Publication of 'The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich'
1848 Resignation from Oriel College Fellowship
1848 Travel to Paris and Rome

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

1795 Coleridge's Friendship with William Wordsworth
1797 Coleridge's Opium Use Begins
1798 Coleridge's Visit to Germany
1798 Publication of 'Lyrical Ballads'
1799 Coleridge's Marriage to Sara Fricker
1800 Coleridge's Move to Keswick
1816 Publication of 'Christabel'
1834 Coleridge's Death

Emotional landscapes

Arthur Hugh Clough: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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