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

A.E.Housman A.E.Housman

Poet B

Gerald Gould Gerald Gould
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 69% Poems 81% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
A.E.Housman

A.E.Housman

26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936 (~77)
19 live poems · English

Alfred Edward Housman was born on 26 March 1859 at Valley House, Fockbury, a small hamlet near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, England, and died in Cambridge on 30 April 1936. He became, by way of an unusually divided life, both one of the most recognizable lyric poets in English and one of the most formidable classical scholars of his generation. The apparent contrast between these identities has long fascinated reade…

“You are right in supposing that I do not look with favour on the collecting of first editions and autographs, but it is a vice which is sometimes found in otherwise virtuous persons.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Gerald Gould

Gerald Gould

9 April 1885 – 2 November 1936 (~51)
2 live poems · English

In the landscape of early twentieth-century English poetry, Gerald Gould occupies a curious position—too well-known to have been forgotten entirely, yet too overlooked to claim his rightful place in the literary canon. Born in Scarborough, Yorkshire in 1885 and raised in Norwich, Gould lived through one of the most tumultuous periods in British history, a time when the certainties of the Victorian age gave way to the…

“Instinct, as Falstaff said, is a great matter; but it is not the whole.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

A.E.Housman
Gerald Gould
1859 1936
They overlapped for 52 years (1885–1936). When Gerald Gould was born, A.E.Housman was about 26.
A.E.Housman in history Gerald Gould in history Years they were given

On the map

About 242 km separate Fockbury, Worcestershire, England from Scarborough, England. Both have ground in England.

A.E.Housman

Gerald Gould

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

world love desire

A.E.Housman only

death life beauty self nature mortality heart pastoral dead soldier memory condemned

Gerald Gould only

beloved spell hands wander thirst wanderer road stars longing

From the biographies

A.E.Housman: fockbury, bromsgrove, moses jackson, a shropshire lad, loveliest of trees, to an athlete dying young, when i was one-and-twenty, classical scholar. Gerald Gould: norwich, barbara ayrton, georgian poet, lyrics, an essay on the nature of lyric, united suffragists, men's league for women's suffrage, the happy tree and other poems.

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.

Oh fair enough are sky and plain
A.E.Housman
76% world, desire
Compare
The Spell
Gerald Gould
The True Lover
A.E.Housman
76% love, world
Compare
The Spell
Gerald Gould
Now hollow fires burn out to black
A.E.Housman
76% world
Compare
Wander-Thirst
Gerald Gould
Oh fair enough are sky and plain
A.E.Housman
75% world
Compare
Wander-Thirst
Gerald Gould
Good creatures
A.E.Housman
75% world
Compare
Wander-Thirst
Gerald Gould
Oh, when I was in love with you
A.E.Housman
74% love
Compare
The Spell
Gerald Gould

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Coca-Cola invented by John Pemberton in Atlanta
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia
1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis

A.E.Housman

1877 Education at St John's College, Oxford
1877 Unrequited Love for Moses Jackson
1892 Appointment as Professor of Latin at University College London
1894 Death of his Father
1896 Publication of 'A Shropshire Lad'
1905 Appointment as Professor of Latin at University College London
1917 Death of Edward Thomas
1922 Publication of 'Last Poems'

Gerald Gould

1903 Education at University College London
1906 Publication of 'Lyrics'
1909 Fellowship at Merton College, Oxford
1909 Publication of 'An Essay on the Nature of Lyric'
1910 Marriage to Barbara Ayrton
1916 Relocation to London
1920 Publication of 'The Poet's Handbook'
1930 Publication of 'The New Poetry'

Emotional landscapes

A.E.Housman: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Gerald Gould: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality.

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