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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

Cecil Frances Alexander Cecil Frances Alexander

Poet B

Christina Rossetti Christina Rossetti
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 69% Poems 87% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Cecil Frances Alexander

Cecil Frances Alexander

14 April 1818 – 12 October 1895 (~77)
3 live poems · English

Cecil Frances Alexander, born Cecil Frances Humphreys on 14 April 1818 and dead on 12 October 1895, became one of the most widely sung and influential hymn writers of the nineteenth century. Her name may be less immediately familiar than the opening lines of her best-known hymns, yet “Once in Royal David’s City,” “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” “There Is a Green Hill Far Away,” and “Jesus Calls Us o’er the Tumult”…

“literary sacrilege—sacrilege against the dead in that which was best and noblest of them”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Irish Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Joy
Listen Timeline Affinities
Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti

5 December 1830 – 29 December 1894 (~64)
68 live poems · English

To read Christina Rossetti is to enter a world of exquisite tension, a realm where the sacred and the sensual wage a quiet but ferocious war. She is the poet of renunciation who wrote some of the most sensuous verse in the English language, the devout Anglo-Catholic who filled her pages with goblin fruits that drip with irresistible juice, and the reclusive Victorian spinster whose inner life was a tumultuous landsca…

“The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Cecil Frances Alexander
Christina Rossetti
1818 1895
They overlapped for 65 years (1830–1894). When Christina Rossetti was born, Cecil Frances Alexander was about 12. Cecil Frances Alexander was about 76 when Christina Rossetti died.
Cecil Frances Alexander in history Christina Rossetti in history Years they were given

On the map

About 461 km separate Dublin, Ireland from 38 Charlotte Street, London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Cecil Frances Alexander

Christina Rossetti

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

world nature beauty

Cecil Frances Alexander only

social faith creation land fairy dreams truth ideal reality internal music birds

Christina Rossetti only

life love death spiritual divine loss rose flowers self spring grief dead

From the biographies

religious

Cecil Frances Alexander: anglo-irish protestant, william alexander, once in royal david's city, all things bright and beautiful, there is a green hill far away, jesus calls us o’er the tumult, hymns for little children, verses for holy seasons. Christina Rossetti: pre-raphaelite brotherhood, goblin market, the girlhood of mary virgin, dante gabriel rossetti, james collinson, charles bagot cayley, anglo-catholic, sing-song: a nursery rhyme book.

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.

When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
81%
Compare
Spring Quiet
Christina Rossetti
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
80%
Compare
Who Has Seen the Wind?
Christina Rossetti
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
80%
Compare
Rest
Christina Rossetti
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
80%
Compare
Bird or Beast
Christina Rossetti
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
79% life
Compare
O roses for the flush of youth
Christina Rossetti
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
79%
Compare
De Profundis
Christina Rossetti

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction in London
1831 HMS Beagle Begins Darwin's Survey Voyage
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction
1831 Publication of 'Canti'
1833 The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire
1834 Publication of 'Philip van Artevelde'
1836 Publication of 'Nature'

Cecil Frances Alexander

1835 Early Literary Development of Cecil Frances Alexander
1848 Publication of 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'
1848 Publication of 'Once in Royal David's City'
1850 Marriage to William Alexander
1850 Relocation to Armagh, Ireland
1858 Publication of 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'
1860 Involvement in Charitable Work
1861 Publication of 'The Child's Book of Praise'

Christina Rossetti

1847 Christina Rossetti's First Published Poems
1850 Christina Rossetti's Engagement to James Collinson
1854 Christina Rossetti's Religious Conversion
1854 Death of Gabriele Rossetti
1859 Christina Rossetti Begins Volunteer Work at Highgate Penitentiary
1866 Christina Rossetti Publishes 'The Prince's Progress and Other Poems'
1881 Christina Rossetti Publishes 'A Pageant and Other Poems'
1892 Christina Rossetti Undergoes Surgery for Breast Cancer

Emotional landscapes

Cecil Frances Alexander: Spirituality, Wonder, Joy. Christina Rossetti: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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