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

William Ernest Henley William Ernest Henley
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 73% Poems 93% Blended 82%
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…

“Nature meant me for solitude and meditation, which frequently takes the form of going to sleep.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley

23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903 (~54)
8 live poems · English

William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and died on 11 July 1903 at Woking, Surrey. He occupies an unusual place in English literary history: widely remembered by the public for a single short poem, “Invictus,” yet far more consequential in his own age as a poet, editor, critic, journalist, dramatist, and formidable presence in literary society. Henley’s life was shaped by physical pa…

“The words in which he unpacked his heart are vitalised with passion.”

Neighbourhood: Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

A.E.Housman
William Ernest Henley
1849 1936
They overlapped for 45 years (1859–1903). When A.E.Housman was born, William Ernest Henley was about 10. A.E.Housman was about 44 when William Ernest Henley died.

On the map

About 55 km separate Fockbury, Worcestershire, England from Gloucester, 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

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. William Ernest Henley: gloucester, woking, invictus, thomas edward brown, joseph lister, in hospital sequence, anna boyle, margaret emma henley.

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.

The Day of Battle
A.E.Housman
84%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
With rue my heart is laden
A.E.Housman
82% death
Compare
Margaritæ Sorori
William Ernest Henley
Be still, my soul
A.E.Housman
82%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
Be still, my soul
A.E.Housman
81% suffering
Compare
Suicide
William Ernest Henley
Be still, my soul
A.E.Housman
81% suffering
Compare
Life is bitter
William Ernest Henley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

A.E.Housman: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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