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



Poet Affinities

Every poet has a thematic centre of gravity averaged from their critiqued poems. Here we use that to find the poets whose work rhymes with a given writer — often in surprising ways.

Rank by: Both (blended) Life & context Their poems

Poets whose work rhymes most with Bernard Barton

Clifford Bax
13 July 1886–18 November 1962 (~76)
2 poems analysed
81% affinity
Shared: social, beauty
bio 75% · poems 87%
Robert Williams Buchanan
18 August 1841–10 June 1901 (~60)
3 poems analysed
80% affinity
Shared: social
bio 78% · poems 82%
William Wordsworth
7 April 1770–23 April 1850 (~80)
51 poems analysed
79% affinity
Shared: beauty, life
bio 71% · poems 89%
William Lisle Bowles
24 September 1762–7 April 1850 (~88)
8 poems analysed
79% affinity
bio 72% · poems 87%
Barry Cornwall
21 November 1787–5 October 1874 (~87)
10 poems analysed
78% affinity
Shared: charles lamb, social
bio 72% · poems 86%
Alfred Lord Tennyson
6 August 1809–6 October 1892 (~83)
27 poems analysed
78% affinity
Shared: social
bio 71% · poems 86%
George Herbert
3 April 1593–1 March 1633 (~40)
3 poems analysed
78% affinity
Shared: religious, divine, spiritual
bio 70% · poems 87%
G. K. Chesterton
29 May 1874–14 June 1936 (~62)
13 poems analysed
78% affinity
Shared: religious
bio 70% · poems 87%
Charles Tennyson Turner
4 July 1808–25 April 1879 (~71)
8 poems analysed
77% affinity
Shared: religious, beauty
bio 70% · poems 86%
Thomas Flatman
21 February 1635–8 December 1688 (~53)
2 poems analysed
77% affinity
Shared: religious, social
bio 73% · poems 83%
Alfred Austin
30 May 1835–2 June 1913 (~78)
17 poems analysed
77% affinity
Shared: social, life
bio 70% · poems 86%
Thomas, Lord Vaux
25 April 1509–c. October 1556 (~47)
2 poems analysed
77% affinity
Shared: life
bio 72% · poems 83%
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