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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I 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

Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Lord Tennyson

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 79% Poems 92% Blended 85%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 (~83)
27 live poems · English

Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…

“The poet can scarcely be judged with fairness in one age or another. He must abide the judgment of the ages.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
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…

“All his life long he was addicted to attitude; all his life long he was a poseur of the purest water.”

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

In time

Alfred Lord Tennyson
William Ernest Henley
1809 1903
They overlapped for 44 years (1849–1892). When William Ernest Henley was born, Alfred Lord Tennyson was about 40. William Ernest Henley was about 43 when Alfred Lord Tennyson died.

On the map

About 216 km separate Somersby, Lincolnshire, 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

Alfred Lord Tennyson: somersby, lincolnshire, victorian age, arthur henry hallam, in memoriam, the lady of shalott, the lotos-eaters, ulysses. 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.

Crossing the Bar
Alfred Lord Tennyson
82% death, life
Compare
Margaritæ Sorori
William Ernest Henley
The Sailor Boy
Alfred Lord Tennyson
82% life
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
81% love
Compare
O, gather me the rose
William Ernest Henley
Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
80% death, life
Compare
Margaritæ Sorori
William Ernest Henley
A Dirge
Alfred Lord Tennyson
80% death
Compare
Margaritæ Sorori
William Ernest Henley
Go not, happy day
Alfred Lord Tennyson
80%
Compare
O, gather me the rose
William Ernest Henley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow. William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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