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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I 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

Alfred Douglas Alfred Douglas

Poet B

W. H. Davies W. H. Davies
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 72% Poems 89% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alfred Douglas

Alfred Douglas

22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945 (~75)
3 live poems · English

Alfred Bruce Douglas was born on 22 October 1870 at Ham Hill House, near Powick in Worcestershire, into a family whose rank, wealth, volatility, and theatrical public reputation would shape his life almost as powerfully as his literary gifts. He was the third son of John Sholto Douglas, ninth Marquess of Queensberry, and Lady Sybil Montgomery, daughter of the first Baron of Abergavenny. The boy was known from childho…

“I gave up all idea of happiness in this life, and clung to Catholicism as my only consolation.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
W. H. Davies

W. H. Davies

3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940 (~69)
23 live poems · English

William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…

“As long as I love Beauty I am young.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Alfred Douglas
W. H. Davies
1870 1945
They overlapped for 70 years (1871–1940). When W. H. Davies was born, Alfred Douglas was about 1. Alfred Douglas was about 70 when W. H. Davies died.
Alfred Douglas in history W. H. Davies in history Years they were given

On the map

About 86 km separate Ham Hill House, Worcestershire, England from Newport, Wales. Both have ground in England.

Alfred Douglas

W. H. Davies

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

social green life world

Alfred Douglas only

silence wood music river sorrow path voice singer shark park placid existence

W. H. Davies only

beauty nature love beloved birds power spring clouds self mother tree happiness

From the biographies

social

Alfred Douglas: ham hill house, oscar wilde, the chameleon, two loves, magdalen college, the spirit lamp, french symbolism, salomé. W. H. Davies: newport, monmouthshire, the soul destroyer, leisure, george bernard shaw, edward thomas, super-tramp, the autobiography of a super-tramp.

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 Green River
Alfred Douglas
84% green
Compare
When the Cuckoo Sings
W. H. Davies
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
82% music
Compare
Love's Inspiration
W. H. Davies
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
82%
Compare
Days Too Short
W. H. Davies
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
80% green
Compare
The Two Lives
W. H. Davies
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
80%
Compare
Joy Supreme
W. H. Davies
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
79%
Compare
My Youth
W. H. Davies

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1871 Publication of 'Middlemarch'
1871 Publication of 'Rimas'
1873 Maxwell publishes Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in Cambridge
1873 Rimbaud's 'A Season in Hell' Composition
1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus

Alfred Douglas

1889 Enrollment at Magdalen College, Oxford
1891 Meeting Oscar Wilde
1894 Publication of 'Two Loves'
1895 Oscar Wilde's Imprisonment
1899 Publication of 'The City of the Soul'
1900 Deterioration of Relationship with Wilde
1909 Publication of 'The Duke of Berwick'
1913 Conversion to Roman Catholicism

W. H. Davies

1893 Davies's Departure for America
1899 Injury and Loss of Foot
1905 Publication of 'The Soul's Destroyer'
1905 Return to England and Early Publications
1908 Publication of 'The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp'
1916 Publication of 'Nature Poems'
1930 Publication of 'Collected Poems'
1934 Publication of 'Collected Poems'

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Douglas: Irony, Sorrow, Longing. W. H. Davies: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing.

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