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

Hervey Allen Hervey Allen

Poet B

Daniel Webster Davis Daniel Webster Davis
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 62% Poems 78% Blended 69%
Swap sides Another related pair
Hervey Allen

Hervey Allen

8 December 1889 – 28 December 1949 (~60)
2 live poems · English

On a crisp December day in 1889, in the bustling industrial heart of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, William Hervey Allen Jr. entered the world. Born on December 8 to a middle-class family—his father, an inventive engineer who devised an automatic blast furnace stoker that helped power the steel mills—young Hervey grew up amid the clang of factories and the haze of smoke that defined the city’s relentless energy. He would…

“Local color has a fatal tendency to remain local; but it is also true that the universal often borders on the void.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Modernist Poets, Nature Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Wonder, Fear
Daniel Webster Davis

Daniel Webster Davis

25 March 1862 – 11 October 1913 (~51)
2 live poems · English

In the flickering twilight of America's greatest national trial, on March 25, 1862, Daniel Webster Davis entered the world in bondage. Born in either Caroline or Hanover County, Virginia, to enslaved parents—Randall or John Davis and Charlotte Ann Christian Davis—he drew his first breath amid the chaos of the Civil War, a conflict that would soon shatter the chains binding his family. His father died early, leaving h…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness

In time

Hervey Allen
Daniel Webster Davis
1862 1949
They overlapped for 25 years (1889–1913). When Hervey Allen was born, Daniel Webster Davis was about 27. Hervey Allen was about 24 when Daniel Webster Davis died.

On the map

About 351 km separate Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States from Caroline County, Virginia, USA. Shared ground: United States.

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

Hervey Allen: pittsburgh, coconut grove, ann allen, world war i veteran, ballads of the border, carolina chansons, wampum and old gold, toward the flame. Daniel Webster Davis: caroline county virginia, richmond virginia, charlotte ann christian davis, emancipation, idle moments, weh down souf, garrison lyceum, virginia teachers' reading circle.

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.

Chicken Blood
Hervey Allen
71% life
Compare
Good Night
Daniel Webster Davis
Chicken Blood
Hervey Allen
69%
Compare
Light in Darkness
Daniel Webster Davis
Walls
Hervey Allen
67%
Compare
Good Night
Daniel Webster Davis
Walls
Hervey Allen
66%
Compare
Light in Darkness
Daniel Webster Davis

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Hervey Allen: Irony, Wonder, Fear. Daniel Webster Davis: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

Skip to main content