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 Ledwidge Francis Ledwidge

Poet B

Alan Seeger Alan Seeger
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 74% Poems 91% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Francis Ledwidge

Francis Ledwidge

19 August 1887 – 31 July 1917 (~30)
8 live poems · English

In the annals of Irish literature, few figures embody the tragic intersection of artistic promise and historical circumstance as poignantly as Francis Edward Ledwidge. Born into rural poverty in County Meath in 1887 and killed on a Belgian battlefield in 1917, Ledwidge's thirty years encompassed a meteoric rise from agricultural laborer to celebrated poet, a journey that mirrors the broader struggles of Ireland durin…

“Meanwhile the years were coming over me with their wisdom, and I began to realise that men cannot live by dreams.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Georgian Poets, Irish Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
Alan Seeger

Alan Seeger

22 June 1888 – 4 July 1916 (~28)
12 live poems · English

Alan Seeger was born in New York City on 22 June 1888, into an American family whose comfort, education, and international connections gave him unusual freedom while also placing before him the question of what a privileged young man ought to do with his life. He died on 4 July 1916, age twenty-eight, in the Battle of the Somme while serving in the French Foreign Legion. In the years between those dates he became, in…

“I have always been a fatalist.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Modernist Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Francis Ledwidge
Alan Seeger
1887 1917
They overlapped for 29 years (1888–1916). When Alan Seeger was born, Francis Ledwidge was about 1. Francis Ledwidge was about 29 when Alan Seeger died.
Francis Ledwidge in history Alan Seeger in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,088 km separate Slane, County Meath, Ireland from New York City, New York, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Francis Ledwidge

Alan Seeger

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.

Shared

world life

Francis Ledwidge only

irish nature soldiers invitation landscape sparrow bird gardener garden fire darkness flowers

Alan Seeger only

beauty love desire happiness death duty pleasure youth forest power beloved self

From the biographies

Francis Ledwidge: county meath, slane, lord dunsany, thomas macdonagh, songs of the fields, songs of peace, irish cultural revival, gallipoli peninsula. Alan Seeger: new york city, battle of the somme, french foreign legion, i have a rendezvous with death, the torture of cuauhtemoc, charles seeger sr., elsie simmons adams seeger, pete seeger.

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.

An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
81%
Compare
Virginibus Puerisque...
Alan Seeger
The Irish in Gallipoli
Francis Ledwidge
80% soldiers, sacrifice, battle
Compare
The Aisne (1914-15)
Alan Seeger
The Sister
Francis Ledwidge
80% life
Compare
Virginibus Puerisque...
Alan Seeger
The Sister
Francis Ledwidge
79% life
Compare
As one of some fat tillage dispossessed
Alan Seeger
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
79%
Compare
As one of some fat tillage dispossessed
Alan Seeger
An Invitation
Francis Ledwidge
78% world
Compare
Antinous
Alan Seeger

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks

Francis Ledwidge

1900 Francis Ledwidge's Early Education and Literary Awakening
1911 Friendship with Lord Dunsany
1915 Publication of 'Songs of the Fields'
1916 Enlistment in the British Army
1916 Publication of 'Songs of Peace'
1917 Death in Battle
1919 Posthumous Recognition and Legacy

Alan Seeger

1898 Seeger Family Relocation to Mexico City
1909 First Publication in Harvard Monthly
1910 Graduation from Harvard University
1912 Relocation to Paris, France
1914 Enlistment in the French Foreign Legion
1916 Death in Battle
1916 Publication of 'I Have a Rendezvous with Death'
1916 Publication of 'Poems'

Emotional landscapes

Francis Ledwidge: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder. Alan Seeger: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder.

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