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

Charles Stuart Calverley Charles Stuart Calverley

Poet B

Hilaire Belloc Hilaire Belloc
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 70% Poems 83% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charles Stuart Calverley

Charles Stuart Calverley

22 December 1831 – 17 February 1884 (~53)
2 live poems · English

Charles Stuart Calverley burst onto the Victorian literary scene like a sudden shaft of sunlight piercing the solemn clouds of high-minded poetry. Born in an age that prized ponderous epics and moralizing odes, he carved out a niche as the undisputed master of light verse, parody, and scholarly wit. His poems danced with verbal dexterity, skewering pretension while celebrating the simple joys of tobacco, beer, and sc…

“I am sorry I have broken his window, but I happened to make an uncommonly good leg hit, and I wish to have my ball back.”

Neighbourhood: Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Joy, Tenderness
Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc

27 July 1870 – 16 July 1953 (~83)
3 live poems · English

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was born on 27 July 1870 at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, near Paris, France, and died on 16 July 1953, eleven days before his eighty-third birthday. He was one of the most conspicuous, gifted, and divisive English-language writers of the first half of the twentieth century: a poet, essayist, historian, travel writer, novelist, political campaigner, Catholic apologist, journalist, and public…

“Faith is a higher faculty than reason.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Despair

In time

Charles Stuart Calverley
Hilaire Belloc
1831 1953
They overlapped for 15 years (1870–1884). When Hilaire Belloc was born, Charles Stuart Calverley was about 39. Hilaire Belloc was about 14 when Charles Stuart Calverley died.

On the map

About 493 km separate Martley, Worcestershire, England from La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

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

From the biographies

balliol college

Charles Stuart Calverley: martley, worcestershire, harrow school, balliol college, christ's college, ode to tobacco, examination paper on pickwick, university school of humour. Hilaire Belloc: la celle-saint-cloud, sussex, the bad child's book of beasts, cautionary tales for children, the path to rome, elodie hogan, bessie rayner parkes, oxford union.

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.

A B C
Charles Stuart Calverley
74%
Compare
Matilda Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death
Hilaire Belloc
Striking
Charles Stuart Calverley
70%
Compare
The Garden Party
Hilaire Belloc
Striking
Charles Stuart Calverley
70%
Compare
Matilda Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death
Hilaire Belloc
A B C
Charles Stuart Calverley
67% social
Compare
The Garden Party
Hilaire Belloc
Striking
Charles Stuart Calverley
66%
Compare
The Statue
Hilaire Belloc
A B C
Charles Stuart Calverley
65% life
Compare
The Statue
Hilaire Belloc

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Charles Stuart Calverley: Irony, Joy, Tenderness. Hilaire Belloc: Sorrow, Irony, Despair.

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