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

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Sassoon

Poet B

William Ernest Henley William Ernest Henley
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 86% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon

8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967 (~81)
21 live poems · English

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 at Weirleigh, a house near the village of Matfield in Kent, and died on 1 September 1967 at Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, a week before his eighty-first birthday. He remains one of the defining literary witnesses of the First World War: a poet whose plain speech, anger, technical control, and mordant irony broke through the patriotic consolations of his age. Yet…

“The nation is being sacrificed to the vanity and self-interest of the politicians.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, LGBTQ+ Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley

23 August 1849 – 11 July 1903 (~54)
8 live poems · English

William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 in Gloucester, England, and died on 11 July 1903 at Woking, Surrey. He occupies an unusual place in English literary history: widely remembered by the public for a single short poem, “Invictus,” yet far more consequential in his own age as a poet, editor, critic, journalist, dramatist, and formidable presence in literary society. Henley’s life was shaped by physical pa…

“In the world of man's creation his people are citizens to match the noblest; they are of the aristocracy of the imagination, the peers in their own right of the society of romance.”

Neighbourhood: Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

Siegfried Sassoon
William Ernest Henley
1849 1967
They overlapped for 18 years (1886–1903). When Siegfried Sassoon was born, William Ernest Henley was about 37. Siegfried Sassoon was about 17 when William Ernest Henley died.

On the map

About 198 km separate Matfield, Kent, England from Gloucester, England. Both have ground in England.

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

From the biographies

Siegfried Sassoon: matfield, heytesbury house, first world war, robert graves, the daffodil murderer, the old huntsman, counter-attack and other poems, military cross. William Ernest Henley: gloucester, woking, invictus, thomas edward brown, joseph lister, in hospital sequence, anna boyle, margaret emma henley.

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.

Does it Matter?
Siegfried Sassoon
80% social
Compare
Suicide
William Ernest Henley
Batallion Relief
Siegfried Sassoon
80%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
Song-Books of the War
Siegfried Sassoon
79%
Compare
When the wind storms by with a shout
William Ernest Henley
Trench Duty
Siegfried Sassoon
79%
Compare
Suicide
William Ernest Henley
Survivors
Siegfried Sassoon
78%
Compare
Suicide
William Ernest Henley
Died of Wounds
Siegfried Sassoon
78%
Compare
Suicide
William Ernest Henley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Siegfried Sassoon: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. William Ernest Henley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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