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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

William Ernest Henley William Ernest Henley

Poet B

A.E.Housman A.E.Housman
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 73% Poems 93% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
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…

“What Disraeli's people have to say is not always original nor profound, but it is crisply and happily phrased and uttered, it reads well, its impression seldom fails of permanency.”

Neighbourhood: Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
A.E.Housman

A.E.Housman

26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936 (~77)
19 live poems · English

Alfred Edward Housman was born on 26 March 1859 at Valley House, Fockbury, a small hamlet near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, England, and died in Cambridge on 30 April 1936. He became, by way of an unusually divided life, both one of the most recognizable lyric poets in English and one of the most formidable classical scholars of his generation. The apparent contrast between these identities has long fascinated reade…

“The less one says about a subject which one does not understand, the less one will say about it which is foolish.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

William Ernest Henley
A.E.Housman
1849 1936
They overlapped for 45 years (1859–1903). When A.E.Housman was born, William Ernest Henley was about 10. A.E.Housman was about 44 when William Ernest Henley died.
William Ernest Henley in history A.E.Housman in history Years they were given

On the map

About 55 km separate Gloucester, England from Fockbury, Worcestershire, England. Both have ground in England.

William Ernest Henley

A.E.Housman

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

life world self

William Ernest Henley only

suffering invictus resilience spirit face adversity soul social suicide smile blackbird bird

A.E.Housman only

death love beauty nature mortality heart desire pastoral dead soldier memory condemned

From the biographies

William Ernest Henley: gloucester, woking, invictus, thomas edward brown, joseph lister, in hospital sequence, anna boyle, margaret emma henley. A.E.Housman: fockbury, bromsgrove, moses jackson, a shropshire lad, loveliest of trees, to an athlete dying young, when i was one-and-twenty, classical scholar.

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.

When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
84%
Compare
The Day of Battle
A.E.Housman
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
83%
Compare
On the idle hill of summer
A.E.Housman
Margaritæ Sorori
William Ernest Henley
82% death
Compare
With rue my heart is laden
A.E.Housman
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
82%
Compare
Be still, my soul
A.E.Housman
Suicide
William Ernest Henley
81% suffering
Compare
Be still, my soul
A.E.Housman
Life is bitter
William Ernest Henley
81% suffering
Compare
Be still, my soul
A.E.Housman

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1859 Discovery of Oil at Drake Well Sparks Pennsylvania Petroleum Boom
1859 First Commercial Oil Well Drilled in Titusville
1859 Publication of 'Adam Bede'
1859 The Carrington Event Aurora
1860 Abraham Lincoln Elected President
1860 Publication of 'Eternal Father, Strong to Save'
1861 James Clerk Maxwell Publishes Equations on Electromagnetism
1861 Publication of 'Barbara Frietchie' Era Civil War

William Ernest Henley

1860 Education at Crypt Grammar School
1873 First Hospitalization for Tuberculosis
1878 Marriage to Anna Henley
1882 Editing the Magazine of Art
1888 Friendship with Robert Louis Stevenson
1888 Publication of 'A Book of Verses'
1890 Friendship with Rudyard Kipling
1893 Publication of 'In Hospital'

A.E.Housman

1877 Education at St John's College, Oxford
1877 Unrequited Love for Moses Jackson
1892 Appointment as Professor of Latin at University College London
1894 Death of his Father
1896 Publication of 'A Shropshire Lad'
1905 Appointment as Professor of Latin at University College London
1917 Death of Edward Thomas
1922 Publication of 'Last Poems'

Emotional landscapes

William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. A.E.Housman: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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