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

Clement Clarke Moore Clement Clarke Moore

Poet B

Edward Hovell-Thurlow Edward Hovell-Thurlow
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 65% Poems 75% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
Clement Clarke Moore

Clement Clarke Moore

15 July 1779 – 10 July 1863 (~84)
2 live poems · English

Clement Clarke Moore was born in New York City on 15 July 1779, into a family whose standing joined religious authority, learning, landholding, and old New York connections. He died on 10 July 1863, five days before his eighty-fourth birthday, having become a respected scholar, educator, churchman, landowner, and local civic figure. Yet history has remembered him overwhelmingly for a poem of fifty-six lines: “A Visit…

“In spite of all the cares and sorrows of this life, he thinks we are so constituted that a good honest hearty laugh, which conceals no malice, and is excited by nothing corrupt, however ungenteel it may be, is healthful both to body and mind.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Edward Hovell-Thurlow

Edward Hovell-Thurlow

10 June 1781 – 4 June 1829 (~48)
2 live poems · English

Edward Hovell-Thurlow, second Baron Thurlow, was born on 10 June 1781 in the Temple, London, and died at Brighton on 4 June 1829, six days before his forty-eighth birthday. He lived during one of the most turbulent and brilliant eras in English literary history: the age of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the Regency, and the flowering of Romantic poetry. Yet he occupied an unusual position within that age…

Neighbourhood: Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Wonder, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Clement Clarke Moore
Edward Hovell-Thurlow
1779 1863
They overlapped for 49 years (1781–1829). When Edward Hovell-Thurlow was born, Clement Clarke Moore was about 2. Clement Clarke Moore was about 50 when Edward Hovell-Thurlow died.
Clement Clarke Moore in history Edward Hovell-Thurlow in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,571 km separate New York City, New York, USA from Westminster, London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Clement Clarke Moore

Edward Hovell-Thurlow

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

beauty world

Clement Clarke Moore only

christmas magical holiday stockings tradition wonder storytelling enduring saint snow children domestic

Edward Hovell-Thurlow only

thurlow nature music season flowers lark summer love landscape

From the biographies

Clement Clarke Moore: new york city, a visit from st. nicholas, the night before christmas, benjamin moore, charity clarke moore, columbia college, general theological seminary, catharine elizabeth taylor. Edward Hovell-Thurlow: temple, london, brighton, second baron thurlow, thomas thurlow, anne bere, edward thurlow, charterhouse school, magdalen college, oxford.

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.

Written After a Snow-Storm
Clement Clarke Moore
74% world
Compare
May
Edward Hovell-Thurlow
Written After a Snow-Storm
Clement Clarke Moore
74% beauty, world
Compare
The Summer
Edward Hovell-Thurlow
A Visit from St. Nicholas
Clement Clarke Moore
62%
Compare
May
Edward Hovell-Thurlow
A Visit from St. Nicholas
Clement Clarke Moore
61%
Compare
The Summer
Edward Hovell-Thurlow

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1783 The Treaty of Paris (1783) Secures American Independence
1787 The Northwest Ordinance of 1787
1789 French Revolution Begins
1789 Storming of the Bastille
1789 The Bastille Stormed — Prison Fortress Falls
1791 Haitian Revolution Begins
1794 William Blake's prophetic books and heterodox theology
1804 Haiti Declares Independence

Clement Clarke Moore

1798 Graduation from Columbia College
1804 Marriage to Catherine Elizabeth Taylor
1805 Birth of First Child
1823 Publication of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'
1830 Appointment as Professor of Literature
1830 Death of His Wife Catherine
1831 Publication of Hebrew Lexicon
1848 Publication of The Night Before Christmas Illustrated

Edward Hovell-Thurlow

1785 Appointment as Principal Registrar
1788 Clerk of the Custodies Appointment
1805 Marriage to Lady Mary Thurlow
1811 Publication of 'The Poetical Works'
1812 Patronage by Lord Byron
1822 Friendship with John Keats
1825 Publication of 'The Last Poems'
1829 Death of Edward Hovell-Thurlow

Emotional landscapes

Clement Clarke Moore: Wonder, Joy, Tenderness. Edward Hovell-Thurlow: Joy, Wonder, Tenderness.

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