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

Cecil Frances Alexander Cecil Frances Alexander

Poet B

Nora Hopper Chesson Nora Hopper Chesson
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 71% Poems 88% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Cecil Frances Alexander

Cecil Frances Alexander

14 April 1818 – 12 October 1895 (~77)
3 live poems · English

Cecil Frances Alexander, born Cecil Frances Humphreys on 14 April 1818 and dead on 12 October 1895, became one of the most widely sung and influential hymn writers of the nineteenth century. Her name may be less immediately familiar than the opening lines of her best-known hymns, yet “Once in Royal David’s City,” “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” “There Is a Green Hill Far Away,” and “Jesus Calls Us o’er the Tumult”…

“literary sacrilege—sacrilege against the dead in that which was best and noblest of them”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Irish Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Joy
Listen Timeline Affinities
Nora Hopper Chesson

Nora Hopper Chesson

2 January 1871 – 14 April 1906 (~35)
79 live poems · English

Nora Hopper Chesson, born Nora Hopper on 2 January 1871 in Exeter, England, and dead on 14 April 1906, belongs to that compelling company of poets whose work has remained more vivid than their public reputation. Her life was brief, her published oeuvre relatively small, and the surviving record of her private circumstances incomplete. Yet the poems she left behind possess a distinctive pressure and atmosphere: they a…

“Nor need we doubt that the lucky man is he who is born on Christmas Day.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Cecil Frances Alexander
Nora Hopper Chesson
1818 1906
They overlapped for 25 years (1871–1895). When Nora Hopper Chesson was born, Cecil Frances Alexander was about 53. Nora Hopper Chesson was about 24 when Cecil Frances Alexander died.
Cecil Frances Alexander in history Nora Hopper Chesson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 346 km separate Dublin, Ireland from Exeter, Devon, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Cecil Frances Alexander

Nora Hopper Chesson

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

world nature beauty fairy

Cecil Frances Alexander only

social faith creation land dreams truth ideal reality internal music birds winter

Nora Hopper Chesson only

love life irish death desire grief memory beloved rose celtic wind light

From the biographies

irish

Cecil Frances Alexander: anglo-irish protestant, william alexander, once in royal david's city, all things bright and beautiful, there is a green hill far away, jesus calls us o’er the tumult, hymns for little children, verses for holy seasons. Nora Hopper Chesson: exeter, irish literary revival, under quicken boughs, celtic legend, wilfrid hugh chesson, fin de siècle, decadence, folk revival.

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.

When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
85%
Compare
The Dinny Math
Nora Hopper Chesson
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
83% winter, life
Compare
A Winter Song
Nora Hopper Chesson
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
82%
Compare
The Woman in the Shadow
Nora Hopper Chesson
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
82% winter
Compare
The Cuckoo Sings in the Heart of Winter
Nora Hopper Chesson
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
82%
Compare
The Hill-Winds
Nora Hopper Chesson
When Winter's Closing Shadows Fall
Cecil Frances Alexander
81%
Compare
To the Ladies Des Baux
Nora Hopper Chesson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1871 Publication of 'Middlemarch'
1871 Publication of 'Rimas'
1873 Maxwell publishes Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in Cambridge
1873 Rimbaud's 'A Season in Hell' Composition
1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus

Cecil Frances Alexander

1835 Early Literary Development of Cecil Frances Alexander
1848 Publication of 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'
1848 Publication of 'Once in Royal David's City'
1850 Marriage to William Alexander
1850 Relocation to Armagh, Ireland
1858 Publication of 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'
1860 Involvement in Charitable Work
1861 Publication of 'The Child's Book of Praise'

Nora Hopper Chesson

1871 Father's Death and Move to London
1887 First Poem Published in Family Herald
1894 Publication of Ballads in Prose
1896 Publication of Under Quicken Boughs
1898 Contribution to The Dome Magazine with Yeats
1900 Publication of Songs of the Morning
1901 Marriage to Wilfrid Hugh Chesson
1902 Publication of Aquamarines

Emotional landscapes

Cecil Frances Alexander: Spirituality, Wonder, Joy. Nora Hopper Chesson: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.

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