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

Sydney Dobell Sydney Dobell

Poet B

Ernest Dowson Ernest Dowson
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 75% Poems 84% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sydney Dobell

Sydney Dobell

5 April 1824 – 22 August 1874 (~50)
2 live poems · English

Sydney Thompson Dobell was born on 5 April 1824 at Cranbrook in Kent, into a family whose circumstances placed him close to the commercial and dissenting middle-class culture of provincial England rather than to the aristocratic literary world. His father, Thomas Dobell, was a wine merchant, and the business of buying, selling, accounting, travelling, and maintaining credit would remain an important fact of Sydney’s…

“It can never be too constantly remembered that we shall be punished or rewarded according to what we are.”

Neighbourhood: Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Ernest Dowson

Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900 (~33)
18 live poems · English

In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to 1900—produced poetry of such delicate melancholy and exquisite craftsmanship that it continues to ca…

“One ought to be able to cease caring for anyone exactly when one wishes; it’s too difficult: or one ought to be able to live directly in the present.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sydney Dobell
Ernest Dowson
1824 1900
They overlapped for 8 years (1867–1874). When Ernest Dowson was born, Sydney Dobell was about 43. Ernest Dowson was about 7 when Sydney Dobell died.
Sydney Dobell in history Ernest Dowson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 43 km separate Cranbrook, Kent, England from Canterbury, Kent, England. Both have ground in England and Kent.

Sydney Dobell

Ernest Dowson

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 dream world love

Sydney Dobell only

dobell future dawn divine humanity weather stars crisis sailor return voice

Ernest Dowson only

life beauty memory lost beloved wine decadent heart dead roses laughter gate

From the biographies

romantic

Sydney Dobell: cranbrook, the roman, sydney yendys, balder, alexander smith, spasmodic poets, crimean war, the youth of europe. Ernest Dowson: lee, kent, rhymers' club, william butler yeats, adelaide foltinowicz, verses, non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno cynarae, vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam, decadent movement.

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 Sailor's Return
Sydney Dobell
75% love
Compare
To a Lost Love
Ernest Dowson
The Sailor's Return
Sydney Dobell
75% love
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
The Sailor's Return
Sydney Dobell
74%
Compare
Terre Promise
Ernest Dowson
The Sailor's Return
Sydney Dobell
74% dream, love
Compare
Vitae Summa Brevis
Ernest Dowson
The Future
Sydney Dobell
73%
Compare
To One in Bedlam
Ernest Dowson
The Sailor's Return
Sydney Dobell
73%
Compare
In a Breton Cemetery
Ernest Dowson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1868 Fourteenth Amendment Ratified
1868 The Helium Discovery Eclipse
1869 Completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad
1870 Hardy Meets Emma Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall
1870 Second Industrial Revolution Accelerates
1871 Publication of 'Middlemarch'
1871 Publication of 'Rimas'
1873 Rimbaud's 'A Season in Hell' Composition

Sydney Dobell

1850 Marriage to Mary Anne Dobell
1852 Publication of 'The Roman' Poem
1854 Publication of 'Balder' Poem
1860 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Sydney Dobell'
1866 Publication of 'The Death of Balder'

Ernest Dowson

1880 Family Relocation to France
1887 First Published Poem
1891 Friendship with Arthur Symons
1892 Involvement with the Rhymers' Club
1896 First Major Publication: 'Verses'
1896 Publication of 'Verses'
1897 Relocation to Paris
1900 Posthumous Recognition

Emotional landscapes

Sydney Dobell: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. Ernest Dowson: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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