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 Thomas Paine

Philip Freneau
2 January 1752–18 December 1832 (~80)
1 poem analysed
73% affinity
Shared: revolutionary
bio 73%
Thomas Babington Macaulay
25 October 1800–28 December 1859 (~59)
2 poems analysed
70% affinity
bio 70%
Henry David Thoreau
12 July 1817–6 May 1862 (~45)
2 poems analysed
70% affinity
Shared: government
bio 70%
Ralph Waldo Emerson
25 May 1803–27 April 1882 (~79)
47 poems analysed
69% affinity
bio 69%
Robert Southey
12 August 1774–21 March 1843 (~69)
4 poems analysed
68% affinity
bio 68%
Alphonse de Lamartine
21 October 1790–1 March 1869 (~79)
2 poems analysed
67% affinity
Shared: french
bio 67%
Thomas Godfrey
4 December 1736–3 August 1763 (~27)
1 poem analysed
67% affinity
Shared: benjamin franklin
bio 67%
Alexander Pope
21 May 1688–30 May 1744 (~56)
6 poems analysed
67% affinity
bio 67%
Stephen Vincent Benét
22 July 1898–13 March 1943 (~45)
2 poems analysed
66% affinity
bio 66%
Thomas Parnell
11 September 1679–24 October 1718 (~39)
2 poems analysed
66% affinity
bio 66%
George Wither
11 June 1588–2 May 1667 (~79)
1 poem analysed
65% affinity
bio 65%
Henry Newbolt
6 June 1862–19 April 1938 (~76)
1 poem analysed
65% affinity
bio 65%
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