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

Gerald Gould Gerald Gould

Poet B

Humbert Wolfe Humbert Wolfe
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 76% Poems 85% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Gerald Gould

Gerald Gould

9 April 1885 – 2 November 1936 (~51)
2 live poems · English

In the landscape of early twentieth-century English poetry, Gerald Gould occupies a curious position—too well-known to have been forgotten entirely, yet too overlooked to claim his rightful place in the literary canon. Born in Scarborough, Yorkshire in 1885 and raised in Norwich, Gould lived through one of the most tumultuous periods in British history, a time when the certainties of the Victorian age gave way to the…

“I was one of the first in this country—I rather think I was quite the first—to hail in print the genius of Mr. Joyce, when, many years ago, he put forth a quiet little volume of short stories called Dubliners.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Love Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality
Humbert Wolfe

Humbert Wolfe

5 January 1885 – 5 January 1940 (~55)
3 live poems · English

On the fifth of January 1885, in the bustling commercial heart of Milan, a child was born who would become one of Britain's most popular poets of the 1920s, yet whose name today is remembered primarily for a single, sardonic epigram. Humbert Wolfe was born as Umberto Wolff in Milan, Italy, to Martin Wolff, a German Jewish merchant, and Consuela Terraccini, an Italian Jew. This dual heritage, straddling Germanic and M…

“You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow

In time

Gerald Gould
Humbert Wolfe
1885 1940
They overlapped for 52 years (1885–1936). They were born in the same year. Humbert Wolfe was about 51 when Gerald Gould died.

On the map

About 1,195 km separate Scarborough, England from Milan, Lombardy, Italy. 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.

Shared

From the biographies

social

Gerald Gould: norwich, barbara ayrton, georgian poet, lyrics, an essay on the nature of lyric, united suffragists, men's league for women's suffrage, the happy tree and other poems. Humbert Wolfe: milan, bradford, wadham college, london sonnets, lampoons, requiem, requiem: the soldier, kensington gardens.

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 Spell
Gerald Gould
79% love
Compare
Love
Humbert Wolfe
Wander-Thirst
Gerald Gould
79%
Compare
The Song
Humbert Wolfe
The Spell
Gerald Gould
77%
Compare
The Song
Humbert Wolfe
Wander-Thirst
Gerald Gould
74%
Compare
Love
Humbert Wolfe
The Spell
Gerald Gould
73% love
Compare
Iliad
Humbert Wolfe
Wander-Thirst
Gerald Gould
69%
Compare
Iliad
Humbert Wolfe

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Gerald Gould: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality. Humbert Wolfe: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow.

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