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

Francis Hastings Doyle Francis Hastings Doyle
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 71% Poems 83% Blended 77%
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…

“While I, necessarily, believe in free-will, I believe also in the influence of heredity.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
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…

“If I failed to teach, I gathered out of my failure some instruction for myself, which he never managed to do.”

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

In time

Alfred Douglas
Francis Hastings Doyle
1810 1945
They overlapped for 19 years (1870–1888). When Alfred Douglas was born, Francis Hastings Doyle was about 60. Alfred Douglas was about 18 when Francis Hastings Doyle died.
Alfred Douglas in history Francis Hastings Doyle in history Years they were given

On the map

About 208 km separate Ham Hill House, Worcestershire, England from Nunappleton, Yorkshire. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Alfred Douglas

Francis Hastings Doyle

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

Alfred Douglas only

social silence wood music river sorrow green path voice singer shark park

Francis Hastings Doyle only

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

From the biographies

social

Alfred Douglas: ham hill house, oscar wilde, the chameleon, two loves, magdalen college, the spirit lamp, french symbolism, salomé. Francis Hastings Doyle: victorian ideals, the private of the buffs, sir francis hastings doyle, barrister, oxford professor, balliol college, eton, the duke of monmouth.

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
75%
Compare
Sympathy
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
73%
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Placid Pug
Alfred Douglas
70% life
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Green River
Alfred Douglas
68%
Compare
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Placid Pug
Alfred Douglas
68%
Compare
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
Hymn For Humble People
Alfred Douglas
67%
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1870 Hardy Meets Emma Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall
1870 Second Industrial Revolution Accelerates
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

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

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

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Douglas: Irony, Sorrow, Longing. Francis Hastings Doyle: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow.

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