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

Frederic William Moorman Frederic William Moorman

Poet B

Joseph Campbell Joseph Campbell
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 69% Poems 86% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Frederic William Moorman

Frederic William Moorman

8 September 1872 – 8 September 1919 (~47)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of English regional literature, few figures have managed to bridge the gap between rigorous academic scholarship and authentic folk expression as successfully as Frederic William Moorman. Born in 1872 and tragically lost to the waters of the Yorkshire Dales in 1919, Moorman's brief but remarkable career represents a unique synthesis of scholarly precision and passionate devotion to the vernacular trad…

“The time may not be far distant when England will again become what it was in Elizabethan days—a nest of singing birds.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell

15 July 1879 – 6 June 1944 (~65)
6 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Irish literary figures who shaped the cultural renaissance of the early twentieth century, Joseph Campbell occupies a unique position as both a guardian of ancient Gaelic traditions and a modernizing force in Irish poetry. Born on July 15, 1879, in Belfast, and dying on June 6, 1944, Campbell lived through one of the most tumultuous and transformative periods in Irish history. His life spanned the…

“What is more beautiful than water falling, or a spray of slán-lus with its flowers?”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Irish Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Frederic William Moorman
Joseph Campbell
1872 1944
They overlapped for 41 years (1879–1919). When Joseph Campbell was born, Frederic William Moorman was about 7. Joseph Campbell was about 40 when Frederic William Moorman died.
Frederic William Moorman in history Joseph Campbell in history Years they were given

On the map

About 476 km separate Ashburton, Devon, England from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Frederic William Moorman

Joseph Campbell

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

Frederic William Moorman only

death industrial rural towns litany social bees feast telling mother harvest infant

Joseph Campbell only

woman irish nature stars candle ruined travail light ghosts dead revival ruins

From the biographies

culture traditions

Frederic William Moorman: yorkshire dales, university of london, university college aberystwyth, university of strasbourg, frances beatrice humpidge, a dalesman's litany, dialect literature, yorkshire dialect. Joseph Campbell: belfast, county down, seosamh mac cathmhaoil, my lagan love, gartan mother's lullaby, irish literary revival, ulster literary theatre, the little cowherd of slainge.

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.

Lile Doad
Frederic William Moorman
79% world
Compare
The Woman at the Well
Joseph Campbell
Lile Doad
Frederic William Moorman
78% life
Compare
The Old Woman
Joseph Campbell
A Dalesman's Litany
Frederic William Moorman
75%
Compare
The Woman at the Well
Joseph Campbell
Telling the Bees
Frederic William Moorman
75% world
Compare
The Woman at the Well
Joseph Campbell
Lile Doad
Frederic William Moorman
74% world
Compare
The Young Girl
Joseph Campbell
Lile Doad
Frederic William Moorman
73% world
Compare
How Still the Night
Joseph Campbell

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'

Frederic William Moorman

1900 Marriage to Mary Moorman
1901 Relocation to Yorkshire
1905 Publication of 'The Dialect Poems'
1910 Publication of 'The Folk-Song of the North'
1913 Publication of 'The Yorkshire Dialect'
1919 Tragic drowning in the Yorkshire Dales

Joseph Campbell

1896 Education at Queen's University Belfast
1906 Marriage to Mary McGowan
1913 Publication of 'The Great Day'
1914 Involvement with the Gaelic League
1920 Publication of 'Songs of the Irish' and 'The Lament for the Sons of the Gael'
1923 Relocation to Dublin
1936 Publication of 'The Complete Poems of Joseph Campbell'
1940 Involvement in the Irish Literary Revival

Emotional landscapes

Frederic William Moorman: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing. Joseph Campbell: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder.

Skip to main content