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

J.G. Holland J.G. Holland

Poet B

Ford Madox Hueffer Ford Madox Hueffer
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 89% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
J.G. Holland

J.G. Holland

24 July 1819 – 12 October 1881 (~62)
7 live poems · English

Josiah Gilbert Holland, known to his immense nineteenth-century readership as J. G. Holland and, in his newspaper essays, as “Timothy Titcomb,” was born on 24 July 1819 in Belchertown, Massachusetts, and died on 12 October 1881 in New York City. During his lifetime he occupied an unusually broad place in American literary culture: he was a physician by training, a journalist, editor, moral essayist, novelist, biograp…

“Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on what we're made of.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
Ford Madox Hueffer

Ford Madox Hueffer

17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939 (~66)
8 live poems · English

Ford Madox Hueffer, who later became Ford Madox Ford, was born on 17 December 1873 in Merton, Surrey, then a semi-rural district on the edge of London, and died on 26 June 1939 in Deauville, France. He was one of the most energetic and consequential literary figures of the transition from late Victorian culture to modernism: a novelist, poet, memoirist, critic, editor, propagandist, literary theorist, and tireless ad…

“But, in the end, it is as useful to have something that will awaken you by its disagreements with yourself as to live for ever in concord with somnolent elders.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

J.G. Holland
Ford Madox Hueffer
1819 1939
They overlapped for 9 years (1873–1881). When Ford Madox Hueffer was born, J.G. Holland was about 54. Ford Madox Hueffer was about 8 when J.G. Holland died.
J.G. Holland in history Ford Madox Hueffer in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,358 km separate Belchertown, Massachusetts, USA from Merton, Surrey, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

J.G. Holland

Ford Madox Hueffer

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

love

J.G. Holland only

life social spiritual nature self leadership leaders civic virtue justice power integrity

Ford Madox Hueffer only

beloved light beauty world past heaven angels religious earthly room eyes autumn

From the biographies

social helped fiction

J.G. Holland: belchertown, massachusetts, timothy titcomb, bitter-sweet, kathrina: her life and mine, history of western massachusetts, springfield republican, samuel bowles. Ford Madox Hueffer: merton, ford madox brown, the brown owl, the questions at the well, the fifth queen trilogy, the good soldier, joseph conrad, the english review.

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.

On the Righi
J.G. Holland
81% nature
Compare
Spring on the Woodland Path
Ford Madox Hueffer
To a Sleeping Singer
J.G. Holland
79% love
Compare
You Make Me Think of Lavender
Ford Madox Hueffer
To a Sleeping Singer
J.G. Holland
79% nature
Compare
Spring on the Woodland Path
Ford Madox Hueffer
False and True
J.G. Holland
78% world
Compare
Autumn Evening
Ford Madox Hueffer
To a Sleeping Singer
J.G. Holland
78% love
Compare
The Dream Hunt
Ford Madox Hueffer
On the Righi
J.G. Holland
77%
Compare
On the Hills
Ford Madox Hueffer

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1873 Death of his wife, Frances Kingsley
1873 Horace Moule Commits Suicide
1873 Maxwell publishes Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in Cambridge
1873 Publication of 'Light'
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

J.G. Holland

1835 Early Education and Self-Teaching of J.G. Holland
1858 Publication of 'Bitter-Sweet'
1858 Publication of 'Timothy Titcomb Letters'
1860 Move to New York City
1867 Publication of 'Kathrina: Her Life and Mine'
1870 Founding of 'Scribner's Monthly'
1873 Publication of 'Arthur Bonnicastle'
1875 Publication of 'The Story of Sevenoaks'

Ford Madox Hueffer

1893 First Publication of Poetry by Ford Madox Hueffer
1894 Marriage to Elsie Martindale
1908 Founding of The English Review
1911 Move to Paris
1915 Publication of 'The Good Soldier'
1919 Change of Name to Ford Madox Ford
1924 Publication of 'Some Do Not...'

Emotional landscapes

J.G. Holland: Spirituality, Longing, Sorrow. Ford Madox Hueffer: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness.

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