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

Henry Scott Holland Henry Scott Holland

Poet B

Henry Newbolt Henry Newbolt
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 72% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
Henry Scott Holland

Henry Scott Holland

27 January 1847 – 17 March 1918 (~71)
1 live poem · English

Henry Scott Holland was born on 27 January 1847 at Ledbury, Herefordshire, into a world of Anglican privilege, classical education, and public duty. He died on 17 March 1918 in Oxford, at the close of a life spent attempting to make Christianity answerable to the moral crises of modern society. He was not, in the ordinary sense, a poet: he did not build his reputation through volumes of verse, nor did he belong to th…

“Death is nothing at all. It matters not. I have only slipped away into the next room.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Henry Newbolt

Henry Newbolt

6 June 1862 – 19 April 1938 (~76)
1 live poem · English

Henry John Newbolt was born on 6 June 1862 at Bilston, Staffordshire, into a clerical and professional English family whose assumptions about duty, learning, faith, service, and social order would remain visible throughout his work. He became one of the most widely known poets of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, celebrated above all for robust ballads of sailors, soldiers, schoolboys, explorers, and imperial end…

“The test of a poem is that it should be memorable.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Henry Scott Holland
Henry Newbolt
1847 1938
They overlapped for 57 years (1862–1918). When Henry Newbolt was born, Henry Scott Holland was about 15. Henry Newbolt was about 56 when Henry Scott Holland died.
Henry Scott Holland in history Henry Newbolt in history Years they were given

On the map

About 64 km separate Ledbury, Herefordshire, England from Bilston, Staffordshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Henry Scott Holland

Henry Newbolt

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

memory

Henry Scott Holland only

death dead life relationship love grief room voice name

Henry Newbolt only

drum legend plymouth past

From the biographies

social

Henry Scott Holland: ledbury, herefordshire, oxford, reverend george henry holland, charlotte dorothy, death is nothing at all, creed and character, christian social union. Henry Newbolt: bilston, clifton college, vitaï lampada, drake’s drum, admirals all, edwardian britain, the island race, margaret edina duckworth.

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.

All is Well
Henry Scott Holland
67% memory
Compare
Drake's Drum
Henry Newbolt

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1862 The Invention of Pasteurization by Louis Pasteur
1863 Battle of Gettysburg
1863 Emancipation Proclamation
1863 Gettysburg Address
1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
1865 Publication of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'
1865 Surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox
1865 Thirteenth Amendment Ratified

Henry Scott Holland

1866 Matriculation at Balliol College, Oxford
1872 Ordination as Deacon
1874 Ordination as Priest
1876 Appointment as Senior Student at Christ Church
1890 Publication of 'The Light of the World'
1897 Involvement with the Christian Social Union
1908 Publication of 'The Church and the Future'
1918 Death of Henry Scott Holland

Henry Newbolt

1874 Newbolt's Education at Clifton College
1885 Graduation from Oxford University
1887 Appointment as a Barrister
1897 Publication of 'Admirals All'
1901 Publication of 'The Island of the Blessed'
1910 Publication of 'The Book of the Sea'
1920 Publication of 'The Newbolt Poems'
1931 Honorary Degree from the University of Oxford

Emotional landscapes

Henry Scott Holland: Peace, Spirituality, Tenderness. Henry Newbolt: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality.

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