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

Philip Bourke Marston Philip Bourke Marston

Poet B

James Clarence Mangan James Clarence Mangan
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 70% Poems 89% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Philip Bourke Marston

Philip Bourke Marston

13 August 1850 – 13 February 1887 (~37)
22 live poems · English

Philip Bourke Marston was born in London on 13 August 1850 and died there on 13 February 1887, only thirty-six years later. His short life was shaped by an unusually concentrated mixture of literary privilege, physical disability, bereavement, emotional intensity, and artistic determination. During his lifetime he was admired by prominent writers, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, and was known in literary circle…

“There can be no doubt that, measuring by quality, not quantity, your place is in the very foremost rank of poets.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
James Clarence Mangan

James Clarence Mangan

1 May 1803 – 20 June 1849 (~46)
8 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Irish literature, few figures are as tragically compelling or as artistically brilliant as James Clarence Mangan. Born into poverty and dying in destitution, Mangan lived a life that reads like one of his own melancholic verses—filled with promise, haunted by despair, and ultimately cut short by the very demons that fueled his extraordinary creativity. His brief forty-six years on earth produced so…

“My natural propensities lead me rather to seek out modes of astonishing mankind than of edifying them.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing

In time

Philip Bourke Marston
James Clarence Mangan
1803 1887
Their lives did not overlap. 1 year separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 464 km separate London, England from Dublin, Ireland. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

Philip Bourke Marston: london, john westland marston, algernon charles swinburne, song-tide and other poems, all in all, blindness, victorian poetry, pre-raphaelite. James Clarence Mangan: fishamble street, irish cultural nationalism, dark rosaleen, the nameless one, john o'donovan, eugene o'curry, the nation, romanticism.

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.

Bereft
Philip Bourke Marston
81%
Compare
The Love-Adieu
James Clarence Mangan
Quantum Mutatus!
Philip Bourke Marston
79% love
Compare
The Ways of Cupid
James Clarence Mangan
A Year Ago
Philip Bourke Marston
79% love
Compare
The Love-Adieu
James Clarence Mangan
Love's Answer
Philip Bourke Marston
79% love
Compare
The Ways of Cupid
James Clarence Mangan
Quantum Mutatus!
Philip Bourke Marston
79% love
Compare
The Love-Adieu
James Clarence Mangan
A little time for laughter
Philip Bourke Marston
78% love
Compare
The Love-Adieu
James Clarence Mangan

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

Philip Bourke Marston: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. James Clarence Mangan: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

Skip to main content