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

Francis Hastings Doyle Francis Hastings Doyle

Poet B

Sir Lewis Morris Sir Lewis Morris
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 89% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Francis Hastings Doyle

Francis Hastings Doyle

21 August 1810 – 8 June 1888 (~78)
3 live poems · English

Francis Hastings Doyle, born on 21 August 1810 and dead on 8 June 1888, belonged to that characteristic Victorian class of cultivated public men for whom poetry was not an isolated vocation but one element in a life shaped by education, law, inherited social position, public duty, and moral reflection. He was a barrister, a baronet, an Oxford professor, and a poet whose best-known verses entered the popular bloodstre…

“It has always been my belief that a more living knowledge of the past is to be obtained by studying the State Trials than by poring over formal narrations, however highly esteemed.”

Neighbourhood: Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
Sir Lewis Morris

Sir Lewis Morris

23 January 1833 – 12 November 1907 (~74)
6 live poems · English

In the landscape of Victorian poetry, few figures embodied the tensions between tradition and modernity, between Welsh heritage and English literary ambition, quite like Sir Lewis Morris. Born on a cold January morning in 1833 in Carmarthen, Wales, and dying in the twilight of the Edwardian era in 1907, Morris lived through one of the most transformative periods in British history. His life and work provide a fascina…

“It is impossible for a poet to live in more than a selection of his works.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Francis Hastings Doyle
Sir Lewis Morris
1810 1907
They overlapped for 56 years (1833–1888). When Sir Lewis Morris was born, Francis Hastings Doyle was about 23. Sir Lewis Morris was about 55 when Francis Hastings Doyle died.
Francis Hastings Doyle in history Sir Lewis Morris in history Years they were given

On the map

About 312 km separate Nunappleton, Yorkshire from Carmarthen, Wales. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Francis Hastings Doyle

Sir Lewis Morris

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 belief

Francis Hastings Doyle only

doyle death soldier courage imperial rose sympathy diamonds gift stoic duty suffering

Sir Lewis Morris only

doubt faith nature truth light alone difference beloved beauty victory hand social

From the biographies

Francis Hastings Doyle: victorian ideals, the private of the buffs, sir francis hastings doyle, barrister, oxford professor, balliol college, eton, the duke of monmouth. Sir Lewis Morris: carmarthen, victorian poetry, anglo-welsh school, songs of two worlds, the epic of hades, alfred tennyson, florence julia pollard, jesus college oxford.

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 Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
80% life
Compare
Alone
Sir Lewis Morris
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
80% belief, light
Compare
Doubt
Sir Lewis Morris
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
77%
Compare
Victory
Sir Lewis Morris
Sympathy
Francis Hastings Doyle
76% life
Compare
Alone
Sir Lewis Morris
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
76% life
Compare
Faith
Sir Lewis Morris
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
76% life
Compare
Victory
Sir Lewis Morris

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1833 The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire
1834 Publication of 'Philip van Artevelde'
1836 Publication of 'Nature'
1837 Publication of 'Life of Sir Walter Scott'
1842 First Pale Lager Brewed in Pilsen
1845 Great Famine in Ireland (1845)
1845 The Outbreak of the Irish Potato Famine
1845 Thoreau's Walden Experiment Begins

Francis Hastings Doyle

1837 Marriage to Frances Mary Wellesley
1848 Death of his father, Lieutenant-General Sir Francis Hastings Doyle
1852 Publication of 'The Battle of the Baltic'
1855 Publication of 'The Return of the Guards'
1857 Appointment as Professor of Poetry at Oxford
1858 Publication of 'The Siege of Lucknow'
1864 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Francis Hastings Doyle'
1865 Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Sir Lewis Morris

1856 Education at Jesus College, Oxford
1860 Marriage to Mary Anne Morris
1865 Publication of 'Songs of Wales'
1870 Publication of 'The Epic of Hades'
1885 Appointment as a Member of the Welsh Nationalist Party
1890 Publication of 'The Welsh Drama'
1896 Knighthood and Recognition
1902 Publication of 'The Collected Poems of Sir Lewis Morris'

Emotional landscapes

Francis Hastings Doyle: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow. Sir Lewis Morris: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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