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

Charles Dickens Charles Dickens

Poet B

Sir Samuel Ferguson Sir Samuel Ferguson
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 55% Blended 55%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870 (~58)
1 live poem · English

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in a modest terraced house at 1 Mile End Terrace in Landport, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. The second of eight children born to John and Elizabeth Dickens, his arrival came during a time of naval activity and modest aspirations in a bustling port town. His father, John, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, was a genial, improvident man whose love for literature,…

“Try to do to others, as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes.”

Neighbourhood: Light Verse Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Sir Samuel Ferguson

Sir Samuel Ferguson

10 March 1810 – 9 August 1886 (~76)
1 live poem · English

Sir Samuel Ferguson was born in Belfast on 10 March 1810, at a moment when Ireland’s political union with Great Britain was still recent and its cultural future was fiercely contested. He died in Howth, County Dublin, on 9 August 1886, having become one of the most distinctive Irish literary figures of the nineteenth century: poet, barrister, judge, antiquary, translator, public servant, and advocate for the serious…

“I was an Irishman before I was a Protestant.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Charles Dickens
Sir Samuel Ferguson
1810 1886
They overlapped for 59 years (1812–1870). When Charles Dickens was born, Sir Samuel Ferguson was about 2. Sir Samuel Ferguson was about 60 when Charles Dickens died.
Charles Dickens in history Sir Samuel Ferguson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 532 km separate Portsmouth, Hampshire, England from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Charles Dickens

Sir Samuel Ferguson

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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Charles Dickens only

dickens hymn laborers social wiltshire faith poor children divine compassion suffering

Sir Samuel Ferguson only

beloved love irish heart ferguson

From the biographies

Charles Dickens: portsmouth, chatham, catherine hogarth, oliver twist, the pickwick papers, sketches by boz, bleak house, great expectations. Sir Samuel Ferguson: belfast, howth, mary catherine guinness, hibernian nights' entertainments, lays of the western gael, the forging of the anchor, ulster cycle, irish antiquarianism.

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 Hymn of the Wiltshire Laborers
Charles Dickens
64%
Compare
Cean Dubh Deelish
Sir Samuel Ferguson

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

Charles Dickens

1822 Charles Dickens' Family Relocation to London
1824 Imprisonment of Charles Dickens' Father
1836 Marriage to Catherine Hogarth
1836 Publication of 'Sketches by Boz'
1850 Establishment of the Household Words Magazine
1850 Publication of 'David Copperfield'
1858 Separation from Catherine Dickens
1859 Publication of 'A Tale of Two Cities'

Sir Samuel Ferguson

1837 Marriage to Mary Anne McGowan
1846 Publication of 'The Forging of the Anchor'
1849 Appointment as a Barrister
1851 Publication of 'Lays of the Western Gael'
1867 Becoming Chief Baron of the Irish Court of Exchequer
1876 Publication of 'The Last of the Irish Chiefs'
1885 Knighted for Public Service
1886 Final Publication: 'Poems and Translations'

Emotional landscapes

Charles Dickens: Despair, Sorrow, Spirituality. Sir Samuel Ferguson: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality.

Skip to main content