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

Katharine Tynan Hinkson Katharine Tynan Hinkson

Poet B

Alice Meynell Alice Meynell
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 73% Poems 84% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Katharine Tynan Hinkson

Katharine Tynan Hinkson

23 January 1861 – 2 April 1931 (~70)
2 live poems · English

Katharine Tynan Hinkson, born Katharine Tynan on 23 January 1861 and dead on 2 April 1931, was one of the most industrious and visible Irish writers of her generation. Poet, novelist, reviewer, memoirist, editor, children’s writer, and biographer, she published with a speed and abundance that can make her career seem almost bewildering to a modern reader. Her name is most often associated with the first phase of the…

“There is an Irish way of paying compliments as though they were irresistible truths which makes what otherwise would be an impertinence, delightful.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Irish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell

11 October 1847 – 27 November 1922 (~75)
3 live poems · English

Alice Meynell, born Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson on 11 October 1847 and dead on 27 November 1922, was one of the most distinctive English writers to work across the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. A poet of exquisite compression, an essayist of alert and sensuous intelligence, a critic, editor, Catholic public intellectual, and campaigner for women’s suffrage, she made a literary identity that cannot be r…

“The true color of life is the color of the body, the color of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest color of the unpublished blood.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Katharine Tynan Hinkson
Alice Meynell
1847 1931
They overlapped for 62 years (1861–1922). When Katharine Tynan Hinkson was born, Alice Meynell was about 14. Katharine Tynan Hinkson was about 61 when Alice Meynell died.
Katharine Tynan Hinkson in history Alice Meynell in history Years they were given

On the map

About 465 km separate Clondalkin, County Dublin, Ireland from Barnes, London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Katharine Tynan Hinkson

Alice Meynell

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

music

Katharine Tynan Hinkson only

tynan lambs lamb christ suffering sheep religious christian world pastoral wind barley

Alice Meynell only

love thrush bird listener sound gardens garden heart birds self beloved silence

From the biographies

catholic women

Katharine Tynan Hinkson: county dublin, whitehall, catholic farming family, w. b. yeats, christina rossetti, irish literary revival, shamrocks and ballads, the handsome brandons. Alice Meynell: edwardian, wilfrid meynell, preludes, renouncement, catholicism, francis thompson, the colour of life, the lady poverty.

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 Wind That Shakes the Barley
Katharine Tynan Hinkson
77%
Compare
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
Sheep and Lambs
Katharine Tynan Hinkson
75%
Compare
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Katharine Tynan Hinkson
75% music
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
Sheep and Lambs
Katharine Tynan Hinkson
73%
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Katharine Tynan Hinkson
71%
Compare
My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell
Sheep and Lambs
Katharine Tynan Hinkson
70%
Compare
My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1861 Battle of Fort Sumter
1861 James Clerk Maxwell Publishes Equations on Electromagnetism
1861 Louis Pasteur Confirms Germ Theory
1861 Publication of 'Barbara Frietchie' Era Civil War
1862 The Invention of Pasteurization by Louis Pasteur
1863 Battle of Gettysburg
1863 Emancipation Proclamation
1863 Gettysburg Address

Katharine Tynan Hinkson

1875 Education at Convent School in Drogheda
1885 First Poetry Collection Published
1889 Friendship with W.B. Yeats
1890 Friendship with Lady Gregory
1899 Publication of 'The House of the Black Ring'
1912 Return to Ireland
1915 Publication of 'The Poets of Ireland'
1920 Publication of 'The Last Poems'

Alice Meynell

1868 Alice Meynell's First Published Work
1872 Alice Meynell's Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1877 Marriage to Wilfrid Meynell
1890 Publication of 'The Rhythm of Life'
1897 Alice Meynell's Involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement
1903 Publication of 'The Poems of Alice Meynell'
1915 Death of Alice Meynell's Husband
1921 Publication of 'Last Poems'

Emotional landscapes

Katharine Tynan Hinkson: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality. Alice Meynell: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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