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

Humbert Wolfe Humbert Wolfe

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 74% Poems 88% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
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
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

Humbert Wolfe
William Ernest Henley
1849 1940
They overlapped for 19 years (1885–1903). When Humbert Wolfe was born, William Ernest Henley was about 36. Humbert Wolfe was about 18 when William Ernest Henley died.

On the map

About 1,099 km separate Milan, Lombardy, Italy from Gloucester, 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.

Shared

From the biographies

Humbert Wolfe: milan, bradford, wadham college, london sonnets, lampoons, requiem, requiem: the soldier, kensington gardens. 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.

The Song
Humbert Wolfe
79% life
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
Love
Humbert Wolfe
79% love, beauty
Compare
O, gather me the rose
William Ernest Henley
Iliad
Humbert Wolfe
77% love
Compare
O, gather me the rose
William Ernest Henley
Iliad
Humbert Wolfe
76%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
The Song
Humbert Wolfe
75% life
Compare
Margaritæ Sorori
William Ernest Henley
The Song
Humbert Wolfe
74%
Compare
O, gather me the rose
William Ernest Henley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Humbert Wolfe: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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