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

Robert Southey Robert Southey

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 74% Poems 86% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert Southey

Robert Southey

12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843 (~69)
4 live poems · English

Robert Southey was born in Bristol on 12 August 1774 and died at Greta Hall, near Keswick in the Lake District, on 21 March 1843. During his lifetime he was among the most visible men of letters in Britain: a poet, historian, biographer, reviewer, editor, translator, political commentator, children’s writer, and, from 1813 until his death, Poet Laureate. Yet posterity has treated him unevenly. He is often remembered…

“How unendurable would life be if it were not for the belief that we shall meet again in a better state of existence.”

Neighbourhood: Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder
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…

“because it is rather a shy process to send a shoulder of mutton to the owner of a deer park.”

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

In time

Robert Southey
Francis Hastings Doyle
1774 1888
They overlapped for 34 years (1810–1843). When Francis Hastings Doyle was born, Robert Southey was about 36. Francis Hastings Doyle was about 33 when Robert Southey died.
Robert Southey in history Francis Hastings Doyle in history Years they were given

On the map

About 294 km separate Bristol, England from Nunappleton, Yorkshire. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Robert Southey

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

life

Robert Southey only

social poor rich woman poverty cold wife water traveller husband marriage legend

Francis Hastings Doyle only

doyle death soldier courage imperial rose sympathy diamonds gift love stoic duty

From the biographies

social

Robert Southey: bristol, greta hall, lake district, pantisocracy, edward fricker, samuel taylor coleridge, joan of arc, thalaba the destroyer. 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.

The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
79%
Compare
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
My days among the Dead are past
Robert Southey
74%
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Complaints of the Poor
Robert Southey
71%
Compare
Sympathy
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Battle of Blenheim
Robert Southey
71%
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
My days among the Dead are past
Robert Southey
71%
Compare
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
My days among the Dead are past
Robert Southey
70%
Compare
Sympathy
Francis Hastings Doyle

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1812 French Invasion of Russia Begins
1812 Publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I and II
1812 The Harrowing Retreat from Moscow
1813 Imprisonment in Surrey Gaol
1815 1815 Tambora Eruption
1816 Byron and Lady Byron Separate
1816 The Year Without a Summer
1819 Shelley Writes Ode to the West Wind

Robert Southey

1795 Friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1795 Marriage to Edith Fricker
1795 Publication of 'Joan of Arc'
1801 Publication of 'Thalaba the Destroyer'
1805 Publication of 'Madoc'
1810 Publication of 'The Curse of Kehama'
1813 Appointment as Poet Laureate
1813 Publication of 'The Life of Nelson'

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

Robert Southey: Sorrow, Irony, Wonder. Francis Hastings Doyle: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow.

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