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

Gerald Gould Gerald Gould

Poet B

W. H. Davies W. H. Davies
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 74% Poems 88% Blended 81%
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
Listen Timeline Affinities
W. H. Davies

W. H. Davies

3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940 (~69)
23 live poems · English

William Henry Davies, known throughout his writing life as W. H. Davies, was born on 3 July 1871 at 16 Portland Street in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, and died on 26 September 1940 in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. He remains one of the most unusual figures in twentieth-century British literature: a poet of birds, rain, flowers, beggars, exhausted workers, roadside freedom, and the precarious dignity of people whom r…

“They make literature a mask to hide their real personality, and how can they expect to attain that strength which only comes through honesty and sincerity?”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Gerald Gould
W. H. Davies
1871 1940
They overlapped for 52 years (1885–1936). When Gerald Gould was born, W. H. Davies was about 14. W. H. Davies was about 65 when Gerald Gould died.
Gerald Gould in history W. H. Davies in history Years they were given

On the map

About 347 km separate Scarborough, England from Newport, Wales. Both have ground in England.

Gerald Gould

W. H. Davies

Open both on the History Atlas

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

world love beloved

Gerald Gould only

desire spell hands wander thirst wanderer road stars longing

W. H. Davies only

life beauty nature social birds power spring clouds self mother tree happiness

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. W. H. Davies: newport, monmouthshire, the soul destroyer, leisure, george bernard shaw, edward thomas, super-tramp, the autobiography of a super-tramp.

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
85% love, beloved
Compare
Love's Inspiration
W. H. Davies
The Spell
Gerald Gould
82% beloved, desire
Compare
Joy Supreme
W. H. Davies
The Spell
Gerald Gould
79% love, beloved
Compare
An Early Love
W. H. Davies
Wander-Thirst
Gerald Gould
79%
Compare
The Two Lives
W. H. Davies
The Spell
Gerald Gould
79% love
Compare
Love's Caution
W. H. Davies
The Spell
Gerald Gould
78% world
Compare
Days Too Short
W. H. Davies

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Coca-Cola invented by John Pemberton in Atlanta
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia
1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis

Gerald Gould

1903 Education at University College London
1906 Publication of 'Lyrics'
1909 Fellowship at Merton College, Oxford
1909 Publication of 'An Essay on the Nature of Lyric'
1910 Marriage to Barbara Ayrton
1916 Relocation to London
1920 Publication of 'The Poet's Handbook'
1930 Publication of 'The New Poetry'

W. H. Davies

1893 Davies's Departure for America
1899 Injury and Loss of Foot
1905 Publication of 'The Soul's Destroyer'
1905 Return to England and Early Publications
1908 Publication of 'The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp'
1916 Publication of 'Nature Poems'
1930 Publication of 'Collected Poems'
1934 Publication of 'Collected Poems'

Emotional landscapes

Gerald Gould: Longing, Wonder, Spirituality. W. H. Davies: Tenderness, Wonder, Longing.

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