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

Sir Aubrey de Vere Sir Aubrey de Vere

Poet B

Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Lord Tennyson
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 84% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir Aubrey de Vere

Sir Aubrey de Vere

28 August 1788 – 5 July 1846 (~58)
2 live poems · English

Sir Aubrey de Vere, born Aubrey Hunt on 28 August 1788 and dead on 5 July 1846, was an Irish poet, dramatist, landowner, magistrate, and baronet whose life joined literary aspiration to the duties and assumptions of the Anglo-Irish governing class. He is now frequently encountered as the father of the better-known poet Aubrey Thomas de Vere, and that relationship has sometimes obscured the elder man’s own achievement…

“I am doing what in me lies to keep alive poetry with a little conscience in it.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 (~83)
27 live poems · English

Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…

“You see a great deal of mankind, but it is mankind sick — the devil a saint would be. Do you therefore think you know mankind?”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow

In time

Sir Aubrey de Vere
Alfred Lord Tennyson
1788 1892
They overlapped for 38 years (1809–1846). When Alfred Lord Tennyson was born, Sir Aubrey de Vere was about 21. Alfred Lord Tennyson was about 37 when Sir Aubrey de Vere died.

On the map

About 599 km separate Curragh Chase, County Limerick, Ireland from Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

From the biographies

Sir Aubrey de Vere: curragh chase, county limerick, aubrey thomas de vere, william wordsworth, lord byron, mary spring rice, thomas spring rice, anglo-irish governing class. Alfred Lord Tennyson: somersby, lincolnshire, victorian age, arthur henry hallam, in memoriam, the lady of shalott, the lotos-eaters, ulysses.

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 Perversion of Letters
Sir Aubrey de Vere
74%
Compare
The Flower
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Perversion of Letters
Sir Aubrey de Vere
73%
Compare
The Islet
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Children Band
Sir Aubrey de Vere
73%
Compare
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Children Band
Sir Aubrey de Vere
72%
Compare
Sweet and low, sweet and low
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Children Band
Sir Aubrey de Vere
72%
Compare
Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Perversion of Letters
Sir Aubrey de Vere
71%
Compare
The Miller’s Daughter
Alfred Lord Tennyson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Sir Aubrey de Vere: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow.

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