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

James Clarence Mangan James Clarence Mangan

Poet B

Henry Augustin Beers Henry Augustin Beers
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 59% Blended 59%
Swap sides Another related pair
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…

“So much more difficult is it for mediocrity to appreciate nobleness than for nobleness to tolerate mediocrity.”

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

Henry Augustin Beers

2 July 1847 – 7 September 1926 (~79)
1 live poem · English

In the long history of American literary scholarship, few figures embody the transition from nineteenth-century genteel letters to modern academic criticism as thoroughly as Henry Augustin Beers. Born on July 2, 1847, in Buffalo, New York, and dying on September 7, 1926, in New Haven, Connecticut, Beers spent nearly his entire adult life at Yale University, where his slight frame became a beloved fixture on campus fo…

“He made the English language an organ of expression unexcelled in the history of literature. Yet he is not an English poet simply, but a world-poet.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

James Clarence Mangan
Henry Augustin Beers
1803 1926
They overlapped for 3 years (1847–1849). When Henry Augustin Beers was born, James Clarence Mangan was about 44. Henry Augustin Beers was about 2 when James Clarence Mangan died.
James Clarence Mangan in history Henry Augustin Beers in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,272 km separate Dublin, Ireland from Buffalo, New York, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

James Clarence Mangan

Henry Augustin Beers

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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

James Clarence Mangan only

love romantic irish suffering life death beloved dark heart disease existence philosophical

Henry Augustin Beers only

wilderness forest revelation secret

From the biographies

romanticism

James Clarence Mangan: fishamble street, irish cultural nationalism, dark rosaleen, the nameless one, john o'donovan, eugene o'curry, the nation, romanticism. Henry Augustin Beers: buffalo, new york, new haven, connecticut, yale university, mary florence heaton, james russell lowell, ralph waldo emerson, odds and ends, a century of american literature.

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.

Rest Only in the Grave
James Clarence Mangan
71%
Compare
Ecce in Deserto
Henry Augustin Beers
Life
James Clarence Mangan
71%
Compare
Ecce in Deserto
Henry Augustin Beers
Genuine Ethereality
James Clarence Mangan
71%
Compare
Ecce in Deserto
Henry Augustin Beers
The Ways of Cupid
James Clarence Mangan
69%
Compare
Ecce in Deserto
Henry Augustin Beers
The Love-Adieu
James Clarence Mangan
68%
Compare
Ecce in Deserto
Henry Augustin Beers
The Famine
James Clarence Mangan
66%
Compare
Ecce in Deserto
Henry Augustin Beers

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1847 Ignaz Semmelweis Introduces Handwashing Protocol
1847 Publication of 'Jane Eyre'
1847 Publication of Agnes Grey
1848 Communist Manifesto Published
1848 Publication of 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'
1848 Publication of 'Once in Royal David's City'
1848 Publication of The Biglow Papers
1848 Publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

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

Henry Augustin Beers

1855 Early Education in Hartford
1869 Graduation from Yale College
1885 Publication of 'The Wayside Inn'
1889 Appointment as Professor at Yale
1899 Publication of 'A History of English Romanticism'
1910 Publication of 'The Poet's Poet'
1917 Retirement from Yale University
1926 Death of Henry Augustin Beers

Emotional landscapes

James Clarence Mangan: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Henry Augustin Beers: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality.

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