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

John Boyle O'Reilly John Boyle O'Reilly

Poet B

Francis Ledwidge Francis Ledwidge
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 68% Poems 90% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Boyle O'Reilly

John Boyle O'Reilly

28 June 1844 – 10 August 1890 (~46)
12 live poems · English

On a June morning in 1844, at Dowth Castle near the banks of the River Boyne in County Meath, Ireland, a boy was born into a world of contradictions—a world of ancient Celtic splendour and modern British subjugation, of rich oral tradition and stony colonial reality. That boy, John Boyle O'Reilly, would grow to embody those contradictions more fully than perhaps any Irish-American figure of the nineteenth century: so…

“The right of revolution is sacred. It is the right of self-defence against tyranny.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Irish Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sorrow
Francis Ledwidge

Francis Ledwidge

19 August 1887 – 31 July 1917 (~30)
8 live poems · English

In the annals of Irish literature, few figures embody the tragic intersection of artistic promise and historical circumstance as poignantly as Francis Edward Ledwidge. Born into rural poverty in County Meath in 1887 and killed on a Belgian battlefield in 1917, Ledwidge's thirty years encompassed a meteoric rise from agricultural laborer to celebrated poet, a journey that mirrors the broader struggles of Ireland durin…

“I have always been very quiet and bashful and a great mystery in my own place.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Georgian Poets, Irish Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder

In time

John Boyle O'Reilly
Francis Ledwidge
1844 1917
They overlapped for 4 years (1887–1890). When Francis Ledwidge was born, John Boyle O'Reilly was about 43. Francis Ledwidge was about 3 when John Boyle O'Reilly died.

On the map

About 6 km separate Dowth, County Meath, Ireland from Slane, County Meath, Ireland. Both have ground in The Municipal District of Laytown — Bettystown and County Meath.

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

From the biographies

county meath irish

John Boyle O'Reilly: county meath, dowth castle, irish republican brotherhood, fenian movement, tenth hussars, boston pilot, father patrick mccabe, captain david r.. Francis Ledwidge: county meath, slane, lord dunsany, thomas macdonagh, songs of the fields, songs of peace, irish cultural revival, gallipoli peninsula.

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.

An Old Picture
John Boyle O'Reilly
84% life, world, water
Compare
The Sister
Francis Ledwidge
Life is a Confluence
John Boyle O'Reilly
80%
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
What is Good
John Boyle O'Reilly
79% irish
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
Love, and be Wise
John Boyle O'Reilly
79% world
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
An Old Picture
John Boyle O'Reilly
79% world
Compare
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
What is Good
John Boyle O'Reilly
78% irish
Compare
Jeu d'Esprit
Francis Ledwidge

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Boyle O'Reilly: Tenderness, Longing, Sorrow. Francis Ledwidge: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder.

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