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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Alice Meynell Alice Meynell

Poet B

Alice Dunbar Nelson Alice Dunbar Nelson
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 71% Poems 82% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell

11 October 1847 – 27 November 1922 (~75)
3 live poems · English

Alice Meynell, born Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson on 11 October 1847 and dead on 27 November 1922, was one of the most distinctive English writers to work across the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. A poet of exquisite compression, an essayist of alert and sensuous intelligence, a critic, editor, Catholic public intellectual, and campaigner for women’s suffrage, she made a literary identity that cannot be r…

“The true color of life is the color of the body, the color of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest color of the unpublished blood.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness
Alice Dunbar Nelson

Alice Dunbar Nelson

19 July 1875 – 18 September 1935 (~60)
2 live poems · English

Alice Dunbar Nelson was born Alice Ruth Moore on July 19, 1875, in the bustling, sun-drenched city of New Orleans, Louisiana, a place where the Mississippi River whispered stories of resilience and reinvention into the ears of its diverse inhabitants. She died on September 18, 1935, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the age of sixty, her heart finally succumbing to the strains of a life lived with fierce passion and…

“Every new fad or fashion at once has its denouncers from the pulpit, platform, professor's chair.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, LGBTQ+ Poets, Social Justice Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Alice Meynell
Alice Dunbar Nelson
1847 1935
They overlapped for 48 years (1875–1922). When Alice Dunbar Nelson was born, Alice Meynell was about 28. Alice Dunbar Nelson was about 47 when Alice Meynell died.

On the map

About 7,439 km separate Barnes, London, England from New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

women

Alice Meynell: edwardian, wilfrid meynell, preludes, renouncement, catholicism, francis thompson, the colour of life, the lady poverty. Alice Dunbar Nelson: new orleans, philadelphia, paul laurence dunbar, violets and other tales, the goodness of st. rocque, the stones of the village, phillis wheatley club, national association of colored women.

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.

My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell
75% garden, love
Compare
Amid the Roses
Alice Dunbar Nelson
My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell
74% love
Compare
If I Had Known
Alice Dunbar Nelson
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
73%
Compare
Amid the Roses
Alice Dunbar Nelson
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
72% life, love
Compare
Amid the Roses
Alice Dunbar Nelson
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
70% life, love
Compare
If I Had Known
Alice Dunbar Nelson
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
68%
Compare
If I Had Known
Alice Dunbar Nelson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alice Meynell: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness. Alice Dunbar Nelson: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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