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

Francis Sylvester Mahony Francis Sylvester Mahony

Poet B

Daniel Webster Davis Daniel Webster Davis
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.

Somewhat related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 53% Blended 53%
Swap sides Another related pair
Francis Sylvester Mahony

Francis Sylvester Mahony

31 December 1805 – 18 May 1866 (~61)
1 live poem · English

Francis Sylvester Mahony was born in Cork, Ireland, on 31 December 1805, and died in Paris on 18 May 1866. He is remembered under the name “Father Prout,” the comic clerical persona through which he produced some of the most ingenious literary journalism of the nineteenth century. Yet the witty priest of Watergrasshill, the supposed author of multilingual songs, mock-antiquarian discoveries, and extravagant literary…

“a rare combination of the Teian lyre and the Irish bagpipe; of the Ionian dialect, blending harmoniously with the Cork brogue; an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Joy
Listen Timeline Affinities
Daniel Webster Davis

Daniel Webster Davis

25 March 1862 – 11 October 1913 (~51)
2 live poems · English

In the flickering twilight of America's greatest national trial, on March 25, 1862, Daniel Webster Davis entered the world in bondage. Born in either Caroline or Hanover County, Virginia, to enslaved parents—Randall or John Davis and Charlotte Ann Christian Davis—he drew his first breath amid the chaos of the Civil War, a conflict that would soon shatter the chains binding his family. His father died early, leaving h…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Francis Sylvester Mahony
Daniel Webster Davis
1805 1913
They overlapped for 5 years (1862–1866). When Daniel Webster Davis was born, Francis Sylvester Mahony was about 57. Daniel Webster Davis was about 4 when Francis Sylvester Mahony died.
Francis Sylvester Mahony in history Daniel Webster Davis in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,416 km separate Cork, Ireland from Caroline County, Virginia, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Francis Sylvester Mahony

Daniel Webster Davis

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.

Francis Sylvester Mahony only

bells sound mahony cork shandon city sounds river memory world

Daniel Webster Davis only

faith african life echoes shadows darkness spiritual fear light religious cold brother

From the biographies

Francis Sylvester Mahony: cork, father prout, the bells of shandon, watergrasshill, jesuit, clongowes wood college, italy, paris. Daniel Webster Davis: caroline county virginia, richmond virginia, charlotte ann christian davis, emancipation, idle moments, weh down souf, garrison lyceum, virginia teachers' reading circle.

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 Bells of Shandon
Francis Sylvester Mahony
64%
Compare
Good Night
Daniel Webster Davis
The Bells of Shandon
Francis Sylvester Mahony
63%
Compare
Light in Darkness
Daniel Webster Davis

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1862 The Invention of Pasteurization by Louis Pasteur
1863 Battle of Gettysburg
1863 Emancipation Proclamation
1863 Gettysburg Address
1865 Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
1865 Publication of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'
1865 Surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox
1865 Thirteenth Amendment Ratified

Francis Sylvester Mahony

1832 Ordination as a Catholic Priest
1835 Publication of 'The History of the Life and Times of the Reverend Father Prout'
1846 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Father Prout'

Daniel Webster Davis

1865 Relocation to Richmond, Virginia
1878 Graduation from Richmond Colored Normal and High School
1890 Founding of the Richmond Literary Society
1895 Appointment as a Baptist Minister
1900 Founding of the Virginia State Teachers Association
1900 Participation in the African American Literary Movement
1903 Publication of 'The Negro in the South'
1907 Publication of 'Songs of the South'

Emotional landscapes

Francis Sylvester Mahony: Longing, Tenderness, Joy. Daniel Webster Davis: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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