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.

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

Thomas MacDonagh Thomas MacDonagh
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 70% Poems 89% Blended 79%
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
Thomas MacDonagh

Thomas MacDonagh

1 February 1878 – 3 May 1916 (~38)
3 live poems · English

In the annals of Irish history, few figures embody the complex intersection of literature and revolution as completely as Thomas Stanislaus MacDonagh. Born on February 1, 1878, in the small Tipperary town of Cloughjordan, and executed by firing squad on May 3, 1916, at the age of thirty-eight, MacDonagh's brief life encompassed an extraordinary range of achievements. He was a teacher who co-founded Ireland's first te…

“The poet is the interpreter of the world to men, and the interpreter of men to the world.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

John Boyle O'Reilly
Thomas MacDonagh
1844 1916
They overlapped for 13 years (1878–1890). When Thomas MacDonagh was born, John Boyle O'Reilly was about 34. Thomas MacDonagh was about 12 when John Boyle O'Reilly died.

On the map

About 135 km separate Dowth, County Meath, Ireland from Cloughjordan, Tipperary, Ireland. Shared ground: Ireland.

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

irish

John Boyle O'Reilly: county meath, dowth castle, irish republican brotherhood, fenian movement, tenth hussars, boston pilot, father patrick mccabe, captain david r.. Thomas MacDonagh: cloughjordan, tipperary, easter rising, through the ivory gate, april and may, the golden joy, gaelic league, joseph plunkett.

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.

Forever
John Boyle O'Reilly
82% death, life
Compare
Death
Thomas MacDonagh
The Cry of the Dreamer
John Boyle O'Reilly
78% social, life
Compare
John-John
Thomas MacDonagh
Under the Surface
John Boyle O'Reilly
77% irish
Compare
Death
Thomas MacDonagh
Yesterday and To-Morrow
John Boyle O'Reilly
76% life
Compare
Death
Thomas MacDonagh
An Old Picture
John Boyle O'Reilly
76% life
Compare
John-John
Thomas MacDonagh
Life is a Confluence
John Boyle O'Reilly
76% life
Compare
Death
Thomas MacDonagh

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. Thomas MacDonagh: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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