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. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

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.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

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

Owen Seaman Owen Seaman

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 73% Poems 83% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Owen Seaman

Owen Seaman

18 September 1861 – 2 February 1936 (~75)
2 live poems · English

Owen Seaman, born on 18 September 1861 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and dead on 2 February 1936, occupied an unusually influential place in British literary culture for a man whose name is now less familiar than the names of many writers he parodied, edited, or helped to popularize. Poet, humorist, classicist, journalist, critic, lecturer, and long-serving editor of Punch, he was one of the most conspicuous representat…

“To the authors, many of them my friends, whose methods I have here attempted to imitate.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Anger
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…

“In him there is no hesitation, no fumbling, no uncertainty.”

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

In time

Owen Seaman
William Ernest Henley
1849 1936
They overlapped for 43 years (1861–1903). When Owen Seaman was born, William Ernest Henley was about 12. Owen Seaman was about 42 when William Ernest Henley died.

On the map

About 100 km separate Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England from Gloucester, England. Both have ground in England.

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

culture

Owen Seaman: shrewsbury, punch, edwardian wit, clare college, rossall school, the battle of the bays, in cap and bells, borrowed plumes. 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.

Thomas of the Light Heart
Owen Seaman
75%
Compare
Suicide
William Ernest Henley
To a False Patriot
Owen Seaman
75%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
Thomas of the Light Heart
Owen Seaman
74%
Compare
Invictus
William Ernest Henley
To a False Patriot
Owen Seaman
73%
Compare
Suicide
William Ernest Henley
Thomas of the Light Heart
Owen Seaman
72%
Compare
Margaritæ Sorori
William Ernest Henley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Owen Seaman: Irony, Sorrow, Anger. William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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