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

William Allingham William Allingham

Poet B

Felicia Dorothea Hemans Felicia Dorothea Hemans
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 64% Blended 64%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Allingham

William Allingham

19 March 1824 – 18 November 1889 (~65)
1 live poem · English

William Allingham was born on 19 March 1824 in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, a small market town at the mouth of the River Erne, and died on 18 November 1889 at Hampstead in London. His literary reputation rests above all on a handful of extraordinarily durable lyrics: poems of rivers, birds, childhood, fairy lore, village life, and remembered Irish landscapes. Yet his career was broader and more complicated than the…

“Does not the latent feeling that much of their striving is to no purpose tend to infuse large quantities of sham into men’s work?”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Irish Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Sorrow, Fear
Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

25 September 1793 – 16 May 1835 (~42)
11 live poems · English

Felicia Dorothea Hemans, born Felicia Dorothea Browne on 25 September 1793 and dead on 16 May 1835, was among the most celebrated poets of the early nineteenth century. In her lifetime she was read with an enthusiasm now difficult to imagine: her poems circulated throughout Britain, Ireland, the United States, and the British Empire; they appeared in annuals, schoolbooks, anthologies, newspapers, and domestic parlors…

“Let me, however, be thankful for the happiness I at present enjoy, and for the privilege which peculiar circumstances have afforded me of being able myself to superintend their education.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow

In time

William Allingham
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
1793 1889
They overlapped for 12 years (1824–1835). When William Allingham was born, Felicia Dorothea Hemans was about 31. William Allingham was about 11 when Felicia Dorothea Hemans died.

On the map

About 366 km separate Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland from Liverpool, England. Shared ground: Ireland, United Kingdom.

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

William Allingham: ballyshannon, county donegal, the faeries, laurence bloomfield in ireland, the winding banks of erne, victorian britain, pre-raphaelite circle, dante gabriel rossetti. Felicia Dorothea Hemans: liverpool, gwrych, abergele, casabianca, the forest sanctuary, modern greece, the sceptic, dartmoor prison.

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 Fairies
William Allingham
72% world, life
Compare
Bring Flowers
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
The Fairies
William Allingham
71%
Compare
The Myrtle Bough
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
The Fairies
William Allingham
70% world, life
Compare
The Dial of Flowers
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
The Fairies
William Allingham
69% life
Compare
Thou Wakest from Rosy Sleep
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
The Fairies
William Allingham
69% life
Compare
I Go, Sweet Friends!
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
The Fairies
William Allingham
69% world, life
Compare
The Landing of the Pilgrims
Felicia Dorothea Hemans

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Allingham: Wonder, Sorrow, Fear. Felicia Dorothea Hemans: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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