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

Richard Monckton Milnes Richard Monckton Milnes

Poet B

John Kenyon John Kenyon
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 77% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Richard Monckton Milnes

Richard Monckton Milnes

19 June 1809 – 11 August 1885 (~76)
2 live poems · English

Richard Monckton Milnes, later Lord Houghton, was born on 19 June 1809 in London, into a family whose wealth, political standing, and Yorkshire connections gave him access to the governing and literary worlds of nineteenth-century Britain. He died on 11 August 1885 at Fryston Hall, near Pontefract in Yorkshire, the family seat that remained both a refuge and a symbol of his inherited position. During his long life he…

“The expedition was interesting as a specimen of what I may call a very laudable literary enthusiasm, of which I shall be very glad to see more among the youth of this day.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Kenyon

John Kenyon

2 December 1784 – 3 December 1856 (~72)
1 live poem · English

John Kenyon, born on 2 December 1784 in Trelawny Parish, Jamaica, and dead on 3 December 1856 at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, was a minor poet of the Romantic and early Victorian periods but a major presence in the social history of English literature. His own poems, polished, conscientious, and occasionally touching, have never commanded the attention given to the work of his celebrated friends. Yet Kenyon’s life mat…

Neighbourhood: Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Richard Monckton Milnes
John Kenyon
1784 1885
They overlapped for 48 years (1809–1856). When Richard Monckton Milnes was born, John Kenyon was about 25. Richard Monckton Milnes was about 47 when John Kenyon died.
Richard Monckton Milnes in history John Kenyon in history Years they were given

On the map

About 7,560 km separate London, England from Trelawny, Jamaica. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Richard Monckton Milnes

John Kenyon

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

pleasure

Richard Monckton Milnes only

milnes life loss sacrifice imperial gain myriad roses beauty power pain suffering

John Kenyon only

champagne kenyon wine death styx rosée

From the biographies

social

Richard Monckton Milnes: london, fryston hall, john keats, alfred tennyson, cambridge apostles, memorials of a tour in some parts of greece, poems of many years, palm leaves. John Kenyon: trelawny parish, jamaica, isle of wight, samuel taylor coleridge, william wordsworth, elizabeth barrett browning, robert browning, a rhymed plea for tolerance.

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.

Loss and Gain
Richard Monckton Milnes
70%
Compare
Champagne Rosée
John Kenyon
Pleasure and Pain
Richard Monckton Milnes
66% pleasure
Compare
Champagne Rosée
John Kenyon

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1812 French Invasion of Russia Begins
1812 Publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I and II
1812 The Harrowing Retreat from Moscow
1813 Imprisonment in Surrey Gaol
1815 1815 Tambora Eruption
1816 Byron and Lady Byron Separate
1816 The Year Without a Summer
1819 Shelley Writes Ode to the West Wind

Richard Monckton Milnes

1836 Marriage to Lady Mary Elizabeth Houghton
1840 Publication of 'Poems of Many Years'
1848 Publication of 'The Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats'
1852 Becoming a Member of Parliament
1863 Becoming a Peer as Lord Houghton
1871 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Lord Houghton'
1885 Death of Richard Monckton Milnes

John Kenyon

1795 Early Education of John Kenyon
1798 Transition to Charterhouse School
1802 Enrollment at Peterhouse, Cambridge
1808 Departure from Cambridge
1810 Financial Independence from Inheritance
1815 Literary Salon in London
1845 Support for Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1850 Publication of Kenyon's Poems

Emotional landscapes

Richard Monckton Milnes: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder. John Kenyon: Joy, Sensuality, Wonder.

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