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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we 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

J.G. Holland J.G. Holland

Poet B

James Clarence Mangan James Clarence Mangan
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 61% Poems 85% Blended 72%
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
James Clarence Mangan

James Clarence Mangan

1 May 1803 – 20 June 1849 (~46)
8 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Irish literature, few figures are as tragically compelling or as artistically brilliant as James Clarence Mangan. Born into poverty and dying in destitution, Mangan lived a life that reads like one of his own melancholic verses—filled with promise, haunted by despair, and ultimately cut short by the very demons that fueled his extraordinary creativity. His brief forty-six years on earth produced so…

“Our first efforts, it is true, are not always our happiest. Neither are our first loves. Yet both are most dear to our recollections; for with all first things there is associated a certain mysterious magic.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

J.G. Holland
James Clarence Mangan
1803 1881
They overlapped for 31 years (1819–1849). When J.G. Holland was born, James Clarence Mangan was about 16. J.G. Holland was about 30 when James Clarence Mangan died.
J.G. Holland in history James Clarence Mangan in history Years they were given

On the map

About 4,901 km separate Belchertown, Massachusetts, USA from Dublin, Ireland. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

J.G. Holland

James Clarence Mangan

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

life love

J.G. Holland only

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

James Clarence Mangan only

romantic irish suffering death beloved dark heart disease existence philosophical labyrinth separation

From the biographies

J.G. Holland: belchertown, massachusetts, timothy titcomb, bitter-sweet, kathrina: her life and mine, history of western massachusetts, springfield republican, samuel bowles. James Clarence Mangan: fishamble street, irish cultural nationalism, dark rosaleen, the nameless one, john o'donovan, eugene o'curry, the nation, romanticism.

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.

To a Sleeping Singer
J.G. Holland
76%
Compare
Genuine Ethereality
James Clarence Mangan
To a Sleeping Singer
J.G. Holland
76% love
Compare
The Love-Adieu
James Clarence Mangan
To a Sleeping Singer
J.G. Holland
74% love
Compare
The Ways of Cupid
James Clarence Mangan
On the Righi
J.G. Holland
74%
Compare
The Love-Adieu
James Clarence Mangan
False and True
J.G. Holland
73%
Compare
Genuine Ethereality
James Clarence Mangan
Eureka
J.G. Holland
73% love
Compare
The Ways of Cupid
James Clarence Mangan

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1819 Byron Publishes Mazeppa and the First Two Cantos of Don Juan
1819 John Keats Writes 'To Autumn' Celebrating the Season's Winds
1819 Shelley Writes Ode to the West Wind
1823 Byron Joins the Greek War of Independence
1823 Publication of 'The Poems of Jeremiah Joseph Callanan'
1824 Lord Byron Arrives in Missolonghi to Lead the Greek Forces
1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction

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'

James Clarence Mangan

1810 Early Education of James Clarence Mangan
1825 Mangan's First Published Poem
1830 Mangan's Friendship with Thomas Davis
1842 Mangan's Involvement with the Young Ireland Movement
1846 Publication of 'The Poems of James Clarence Mangan'
1847 Mangan's Struggles with Mental Health
1848 Mangan's Friendship with John O'Hagan
1849 Mangan's Final Years in Dublin

Emotional landscapes

J.G. Holland: Spirituality, Longing, Sorrow. James Clarence Mangan: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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