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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Richard Henry Horne Richard Henry Horne

Poet B

Francis Hastings Doyle Francis Hastings Doyle
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 70% Poems 81% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Richard Henry Horne

Richard Henry Horne

31 December 1803 – 13 March 1884 (~81)
2 live poems · English

Richard Henry Horne entered the world in London on the last day of 1802 (though he himself, with characteristic contrariness, sometimes gave the date as New Year's Day 1803), the son of James Horne, a quarter-master in the 61st Regiment of Foot. His father's military postings took the family to Guernsey, where they lived until James Horne's death in 1810 left the boy fatherless at the age of seven or eight. The young…

“Hitherto they have had almost everything done for them that a nation could desire... everything, in short, has been done, except to make them intelligible to the general reader.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Sorrow, Irony
Listen Timeline Affinities
Francis Hastings Doyle

Francis Hastings Doyle

21 August 1810 – 8 June 1888 (~78)
3 live poems · English

Francis Hastings Doyle, born on 21 August 1810 and dead on 8 June 1888, belonged to that characteristic Victorian class of cultivated public men for whom poetry was not an isolated vocation but one element in a life shaped by education, law, inherited social position, public duty, and moral reflection. He was a barrister, a baronet, an Oxford professor, and a poet whose best-known verses entered the popular bloodstre…

“I write from memory alone; and of memory the principal fountain-head is, and must be, the association of ideas.”

Neighbourhood: Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Richard Henry Horne
Francis Hastings Doyle
1803 1888
They overlapped for 75 years (1810–1884). When Francis Hastings Doyle was born, Richard Henry Horne was about 7. Francis Hastings Doyle was about 74 when Richard Henry Horne died.
Richard Henry Horne in history Francis Hastings Doyle in history Years they were given

On the map

About 283 km separate London, England from Nunappleton, Yorkshire. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Richard Henry Horne

Francis Hastings Doyle

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.

Richard Henry Horne only

horne plough labour dawn blackbird light cold landscape horses gold enslaved body

Francis Hastings Doyle only

doyle death life soldier courage imperial rose sympathy diamonds gift love stoic

From the biographies

Richard Henry Horne: london, guernsey, royal military college, orion, hecatompylos, elizabeth barrett browning, william howitt, cosmo de' medici. Francis Hastings Doyle: victorian ideals, the private of the buffs, sir francis hastings doyle, barrister, oxford professor, balliol college, eton, the duke of monmouth.

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 Slave; a Sea-piece, Off Jamaica
Richard Henry Horne
73%
Compare
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Plough
Richard Henry Horne
71% light
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Plough
Richard Henry Horne
69%
Compare
The Private of the Buffs
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Slave; a Sea-piece, Off Jamaica
Richard Henry Horne
67%
Compare
The Stoic
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Slave; a Sea-piece, Off Jamaica
Richard Henry Horne
65%
Compare
Sympathy
Francis Hastings Doyle
The Plough
Richard Henry Horne
62%
Compare
Sympathy
Francis Hastings Doyle

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

Richard Henry Horne

1810 Early Education and Family Transition for Horne
1825 Expedition with the Mexican Navy
1826 Shipwreck and Return to England
1843 Publication of 'Orion'
1845 Friendship with Alfred Tennyson
1850 Publication of 'The Death of the Old Year'
1857 Publication of 'The Epicurean'
1884 Final Years and Legacy

Francis Hastings Doyle

1837 Marriage to Frances Mary Wellesley
1848 Death of his father, Lieutenant-General Sir Francis Hastings Doyle
1852 Publication of 'The Battle of the Baltic'
1855 Publication of 'The Return of the Guards'
1857 Appointment as Professor of Poetry at Oxford
1858 Publication of 'The Siege of Lucknow'
1864 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Francis Hastings Doyle'
1865 Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Emotional landscapes

Richard Henry Horne: Wonder, Sorrow, Irony. Francis Hastings Doyle: Spirituality, Wonder, Sorrow.

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