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

George Henry Boker George Henry Boker

Poet B

Francis Hastings Doyle Francis Hastings Doyle
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 80% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
George Henry Boker

George Henry Boker

6 October 1823 – 2 January 1890 (~67)
2 live poems · English

In the glittering literary salons of nineteenth-century Philadelphia, where gas lamps cast their warm glow over earnest conversations about poetry and politics, one figure stood at the intersection of art and public service with uncommon grace. George Henry Boker was born on October 6, 1823, into a world of privilege and promise that would shape his destiny as one of America's most accomplished—if underappreciated—po…

“After that the sword was drawn, it struck me that politics had vanished entirely from the scene — that it was now merely a question of patriotism or disloyalty.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Dramatic Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Fear
Listen Timeline Affinities
Francis Hastings Doyle

Francis Hastings Doyle

21 August 1810 – 8 June 1888 (~78)
3 live poems · English

Francis Hastings Doyle, born on 21 August 1810 and dead on 8 June 1888, belonged to that characteristic Victorian class of cultivated public men for whom poetry was not an isolated vocation but one element in a life shaped by education, law, inherited social position, public duty, and moral reflection. He was a barrister, a baronet, an Oxford professor, and a poet whose best-known verses entered the popular bloodstre…

“Now, in my opinion, the critic ought not to be over-fastidious, but to take broad, bold, and tolerant views of whatever comes under his ken.”

Neighbourhood: Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

George Henry Boker
Francis Hastings Doyle
1810 1890
They overlapped for 66 years (1823–1888). When George Henry Boker was born, Francis Hastings Doyle was about 13. George Henry Boker was about 65 when Francis Hastings Doyle died.
George Henry Boker in history Francis Hastings Doyle in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,547 km separate Camden, New Jersey, USA from Nunappleton, Yorkshire. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

George Henry Boker

Francis Hastings Doyle

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

death soldier life

George Henry Boker only

dirge dead philosophical shark ship sailor body sick world

Francis Hastings Doyle only

doyle courage imperial rose sympathy diamonds gift love stoic duty suffering pain

From the biographies

George Henry Boker: philadelphia, the book of the dead, the lessons of life, calaynos, francesca da rimini, bayard taylor, richard henry stoddard, union league club. Francis Hastings Doyle: victorian ideals, the private of the buffs, sir francis hastings doyle, barrister, oxford professor, balliol college, eton, the duke of monmouth.

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.

Dirge for a Soldier
George Henry Boker
78% soldier, death
Compare
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
Dirge for a Soldier
George Henry Boker
72% death, life
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Shark
George Henry Boker
64% death
Compare
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Shark
George Henry Boker
64% death
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
Dirge for a Soldier
George Henry Boker
63% life
Compare
Sympathy
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Shark
George Henry Boker
55%
Compare
Sympathy
Francis Hastings Doyle

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1823 Byron Joins the Greek War of Independence
1823 Publication of 'The Poems of Jeremiah Joseph Callanan'
1824 Lord Byron Arrives in Missolonghi to Lead the Greek Forces
1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction in London
1831 HMS Beagle Begins Darwin's Survey Voyage
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction
1831 Publication of 'Canti'

George Henry Boker

1840 Education at the University of Pennsylvania
1851 Publication of 'The Betrothed'
1861 Involvement in the Civil War
1865 Friendship with Walt Whitman
1869 Appointment as U.S. Minister to Russia
1882 Publication of 'The Book of the Dead'
1886 Publication of 'The Poet and the Critic'
1888 Death of his wife, Mary E. Boker

Francis Hastings Doyle

1837 Marriage to Frances Mary Wellesley
1848 Death of his father, Lieutenant-General Sir Francis Hastings Doyle
1852 Publication of 'The Battle of the Baltic'
1855 Publication of 'The Return of the Guards'
1857 Appointment as Professor of Poetry at Oxford
1858 Publication of 'The Siege of Lucknow'
1864 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Francis Hastings Doyle'
1865 Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Emotional landscapes

George Henry Boker: Sorrow, Despair, Fear. Francis Hastings Doyle: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow.

Skip to main content