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

Frederic William Moorman Frederic William Moorman

Poet B

T. E. Brown T. E. Brown
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 72% Poems 84% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Frederic William Moorman

Frederic William Moorman

8 September 1872 – 8 September 1919 (~47)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of English regional literature, few figures have managed to bridge the gap between rigorous academic scholarship and authentic folk expression as successfully as Frederic William Moorman. Born in 1872 and tragically lost to the waters of the Yorkshire Dales in 1919, Moorman's brief but remarkable career represents a unique synthesis of scholarly precision and passionate devotion to the vernacular trad…

“In the creation of this poetry of the people, by the people, dialect may well be called upon to play a part. Dialect is of the people.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
T. E. Brown

T. E. Brown

5 May 1830 – 29 October 1897 (~67)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Victorian literature, Thomas Edward Brown occupies a unique position—a poet who straddled two worlds with remarkable grace and authenticity. Born on the Isle of Man in 1830 and dying there in 1897, Brown spent his life navigating between the intimate, Celtic traditions of his homeland and the broader currents of English literary culture. His poetry, written primarily in the Manx dialect, captured t…

“I have a great notion of being the master of my own happiness, and not suffering it to be contingent on the manners and conduct of other people.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Scottish Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Frederic William Moorman
T. E. Brown
1830 1919
They overlapped for 26 years (1872–1897). When Frederic William Moorman was born, T. E. Brown was about 42. Frederic William Moorman was about 25 when T. E. Brown died.
Frederic William Moorman in history T. E. Brown in history Years they were given

On the map

About 406 km separate Ashburton, Devon, England from Douglas, Isle of Man.

Frederic William Moorman

T. E. Brown

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

life mother

Frederic William Moorman only

death world industrial rural towns litany social bees feast telling harvest infant

T. E. Brown only

divine return stream stillness leap hills embrace source dhoon nature motion freedom

From the biographies

culture

Frederic William Moorman: yorkshire dales, university of london, university college aberystwyth, university of strasbourg, frances beatrice humpidge, a dalesman's litany, dialect literature, yorkshire dialect. T. E. Brown: isle of man, manx dialect, robert brown, dorothy thompson brown, betsy lee, fo'c's'le yarns, the doctor and other poems, old john 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.

Lile Doad
Frederic William Moorman
76% mother
Compare
The Dhoon
T. E. Brown
A Dalesman's Litany
Frederic William Moorman
73%
Compare
The Dhoon
T. E. Brown
A Dalesman's Litany
Frederic William Moorman
72% life
Compare
Life
T. E. Brown
Lile Doad
Frederic William Moorman
71% life
Compare
Life
T. E. Brown
Telling the Bees
Frederic William Moorman
70%
Compare
The Dhoon
T. E. Brown
Telling the Bees
Frederic William Moorman
70%
Compare
Planting
T. E. Brown

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1873 Maxwell publishes Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in Cambridge
1873 Rimbaud's 'A Season in Hell' Composition
1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'

Frederic William Moorman

1900 Marriage to Mary Moorman
1901 Relocation to Yorkshire
1905 Publication of 'The Dialect Poems'
1910 Publication of 'The Folk-Song of the North'
1913 Publication of 'The Yorkshire Dialect'
1919 Tragic drowning in the Yorkshire Dales

T. E. Brown

1849 Education at St. John's College, Cambridge
1855 Ordination as a Methodist Minister
1865 Publication of 'The Manxman'
1875 Relocation to Liverpool for Teaching
1880 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of T. E. Brown'
1880 Return to the Isle of Man
1884 Publication of 'The Last of the Old School'
1897 Final Years and Legacy

Emotional landscapes

Frederic William Moorman: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing. T. E. Brown: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder.

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