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

Edmund William Gosse Edmund William Gosse

Poet B

Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins
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 85% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Edmund William Gosse

Edmund William Gosse

21 September 1849 – 16 May 1928 (~79)
2 live poems · English

Edmund William Gosse occupies a peculiar and fascinating position in the landscape of English literature. Neither wholly a major poet nor a minor footnote, he exists instead as a crucial connector, a literary ambassador who bridged the austere certainties of Victorian England with the modernist experiments of the twentieth century. Born on September 21, 1849, in London, and dying on May 16, 1928, in the same city, Go…

“In mature years I have always been gregarious, a lover of my kind, dependent upon the company of friends for the very pulse of moral life.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins

28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889 (~45)
17 live poems · English

Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, in Stratford, Essex, which has since been absorbed into the bustling expanse of Greater London. He entered the world as the eldest of what would become nine children in a prosperous, artistic, and devout High Church Anglican family. His father, Manley Hopkins, was a successful marine insurance adjuster who also served as the Hawaiian consul-general in London and dabble…

“The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Edmund William Gosse
Gerard Manley Hopkins
1844 1928
They overlapped for 41 years (1849–1889). When Edmund William Gosse was born, Gerard Manley Hopkins was about 5. Edmund William Gosse was about 40 when Gerard Manley Hopkins died.
Edmund William Gosse in history Gerard Manley Hopkins in history Years they were given

On the map

About 91 km separate London, England from Stratford, Essex, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Edmund William Gosse

Gerard Manley Hopkins

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 heart

Edmund William Gosse only

charcoal burner forest smoke beloved pain suffering love beggar sorrow

Gerard Manley Hopkins only

spiritual divine beauty christ grace soul bird faith spring nature skylark body

From the biographies

london

Edmund William Gosse: london, philip henry gosse, emily bowes, on viol and flute, king erik, pre-raphaelites, henrik ibsen, father and son. Gerard Manley Hopkins: stratford, essex, robert bridges, the wreck of the deutschland, sprung rhythm, oxford movement, john henry newman, society of jesus, terrible sonnets.

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.

I stand before you as a beggar stands
Edmund William Gosse
79% beloved, love
Compare
The Beginning of the End
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I stand before you as a beggar stands
Edmund William Gosse
77% love
Compare
Where art thou friend
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I stand before you as a beggar stands
Edmund William Gosse
76%
Compare
In the Valley of the Elwy
Gerard Manley Hopkins
I stand before you as a beggar stands
Edmund William Gosse
75%
Compare
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Charcoal-Burner
Edmund William Gosse
75% life, self
Compare
The Candle Indoors
Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Charcoal-Burner
Edmund William Gosse
74% world
Compare
In the Valley of the Elwy
Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1850 Publication of 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'
1851 Publication of Moby-Dick
1854 John Snow Traces the Broad Street Pump
1854 Publication of 'Walden'
1856 Invention of the Bessemer Process for Mass Steel Production
1856 Mauveine Synthetic Dye Invention
1856 Perkin's Accidental Discovery of Mauveine
1857 Pasteur Demonstrates the Biological Basis of Fermentation

Edmund William Gosse

1856 Death of Edmund William Gosse's Mother
1866 Education at the University College London
1881 Marriage to Ellen Mary
1889 Appointment as Literary Critic for The Academy
1890 Publication of 'On Viol and Flute'
1907 Publication of 'Father and Son'
1923 Publication of 'The Life of Sir Edmund Gosse'
1928 Death of Edmund William Gosse

Gerard Manley Hopkins

1863 Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford
1866 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1868 Decision to Join the Jesuits
1877 Ordination as a Priest
1880 Friendship with Robert Bridges
1880 Publication of 'The Wreck of the Deutschland'
1889 Death of Gerard Manley Hopkins
1918 Publication of 'Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins'

Emotional landscapes

Edmund William Gosse: Tenderness, Peace, Longing. Gerard Manley Hopkins: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.

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