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 life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I 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

Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Lord Tennyson

Poet B

Lewis Carroll Lewis Carroll
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 62% Poems 87% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 (~83)
27 live poems · English

Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…

“My book is out and I hate it, and so no doubt will you. Never mind, you will like me none the worse.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898 (~66)
11 live poems · English

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who became immortal under the name Lewis Carroll, was born on 27 January 1832 at Daresbury, Cheshire, England, and died on 14 January 1898 at Guildford, Surrey. He was a Victorian clergyman, Oxford mathematician, logician, lecturer, photographer, inventor, letter writer, satirist, and author of some of the most celebrated imaginative literature in the English language. Yet the word “author”…

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Joy, Wonder

In time

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Lewis Carroll
1809 1898
They overlapped for 61 years (1832–1892). When Lewis Carroll was born, Alfred Lord Tennyson was about 23. Lewis Carroll was about 60 when Alfred Lord Tennyson died.

On the map

About 178 km separate Somersby, Lincolnshire, England from Daresbury, Cheshire, England. Both have ground in England.

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

social

Alfred Lord Tennyson: somersby, lincolnshire, victorian age, arthur henry hallam, in memoriam, the lady of shalott, the lotos-eaters, ulysses. Lewis Carroll: daresbury, cheshire, guildford, victorian clergyman, oxford mathematician, alice's adventures in wonderland, through the looking-glass, jabberwocky.

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.

Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
79% memory, life, past
Compare
Faces in the Fire
Lewis Carroll
The Merman
Alfred Lord Tennyson
76%
Compare
Girt with a boyish garb for boyish task
Lewis Carroll
The Islet
Alfred Lord Tennyson
76%
Compare
Girt with a boyish garb for boyish task
Lewis Carroll
Break, Break, Break
Alfred Lord Tennyson
76% life
Compare
Faces in the Fire
Lewis Carroll

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow. Lewis Carroll: Irony, Joy, Wonder.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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