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

J. Milton Hayes J. Milton Hayes

Poet B

Edwin J. Ellis Edwin J. Ellis
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 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
J. Milton Hayes

J. Milton Hayes

1884 – 1940 (~56)
1 live poem · English

Joseph Milton Hayes, known to the public as J. Milton Hayes, was born in Bristol on 13 January 1884 and died on 6 February 1940. During his lifetime he became one of the best-known writers of recitation verse in Britain, a poet whose work was heard as often as it was read. His celebrity rested especially on “The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God,” a narrative poem whose opening line, “There’s a one-eyed yellow idol…

“It appeals to the imagination from the start: those colours, green and yellow, create an atmosphere. Then India, everyone has his own idea of India. Don't tell the public too much. Strike chords.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Edwin J. Ellis

Edwin J. Ellis

20 May 1848 – 1916 (~68)
1 live poem · English

Edwin John Ellis, born in London on 20 May 1848 and dead in 1916, belongs to that large but consequential company of late-Victorian writers whose names have faded while the movements, friendships, and acts of interpretation in which they participated remain central to literary history. He was a poet, painter, critic, editor, and imaginative theorist: a figure drawn to symbolism, myth, spiritual aspiration, and the af…

Neighbourhood: Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

J. Milton Hayes
Edwin J. Ellis
1848 1940
They overlapped for 33 years (1884–1916). When J. Milton Hayes was born, Edwin J. Ellis was about 36. J. Milton Hayes was about 32 when Edwin J. Ellis died.
J. Milton Hayes in history Edwin J. Ellis in history Years they were given

On the map

About 272 km separate Leeds, Yorkshire, England from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

J. Milton Hayes

Edwin J. Ellis

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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

J. Milton Hayes only

idol woman jewel yellow green room

Edwin J. Ellis only

venus love divine myth goddess ideal beloved beauty

From the biographies

J. Milton Hayes: bristol, the green eye of the little yellow god, khatmandu, the punch and judy man, edwardian period, music halls, variety theatres, public recitations. Edwin J. Ellis: london, w. b. yeats, william blake, the works of william blake, seen in three days, fate in arcadia, pre-raphaelite movement, celtic revival.

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.

The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God
J. Milton Hayes
69%
Compare
Venus
Edwin J. Ellis

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Coca-Cola invented by John Pemberton in Atlanta
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia
1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism

J. Milton Hayes

1909 Early Stage Career in Leeds
1911 Publication of 'The Green Eye of the Yellow God'
1914 Marriage to Elsie Hayes
1915 Move to London for Career Advancement
1920 Publication of 'The Whitest Man I Know'
1925 Performance at the Royal Variety Performance
1930 Publication of 'The Punch and Judy Man'
1939 Final Performance Before Illness

Edwin J. Ellis

1860 Education in Art and Literature
1870 Involvement in the Bohemian Circles of London
1878 First Major Publication
1880 Exhibition at the Royal Academy
1881 Marriage to Mary Ellen Smith
1892 Publication of 'Fate in Arcadia and Other Poems'
1895 Friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1906 Publication of 'The Life and Works of William Blake'

Emotional landscapes

J. Milton Hayes: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Edwin J. Ellis: Spirituality, Wonder, Tenderness.

Skip to main content