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

G. K. Chesterton G. K. Chesterton

Poet B

William Ernest Henley William Ernest Henley
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 75% Poems 88% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton

29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936 (~62)
13 live poems · English

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born on 29 May 1874 at Campden Hill in Kensington, London, into a comfortable middle-class household whose mixture of security, imagination, and mild religious seriousness helped to form one of the most exuberant literary personalities of the twentieth century. He died on 14 June 1936 at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, after a career that made him internationally recognizable as an essayis…

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Hymn Writers, Light Verse Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley

23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903 (~54)
8 live poems · English

William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and died on 11 July 1903 at Woking, Surrey. He occupies an unusual place in English literary history: widely remembered by the public for a single short poem, “Invictus,” yet far more consequential in his own age as a poet, editor, critic, journalist, dramatist, and formidable presence in literary society. Henley’s life was shaped by physical pa…

“He was the average clubman plus genius and a style.”

Neighbourhood: Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

G. K. Chesterton
William Ernest Henley
1849 1936
They overlapped for 30 years (1874–1903). When G. K. Chesterton was born, William Ernest Henley was about 25. G. K. Chesterton was about 29 when William Ernest Henley died.

On the map

About 147 km separate Kensington, London, England from Gloucester, England. 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

G. K. Chesterton: campden hill, beaconsfield, father brown, orthodoxy, the wild knight, frances blogg, edmund clerihew bentley, clerihew. William Ernest Henley: gloucester, woking, invictus, thomas edward brown, joseph lister, in hospital sequence, anna boyle, margaret emma henley.

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 Great Minimum
G. K. Chesterton
79%
Compare
Life is bitter
William Ernest Henley
The Kingdom of Heaven
G. K. Chesterton
79%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
A Hymn
G. K. Chesterton
78%
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
A Hymn
G. K. Chesterton
78%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
The Deluge
G. K. Chesterton
77%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
Ballad of the Sun
G. K. Chesterton
77%
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

G. K. Chesterton: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing. William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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