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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

Banjo Paterson Banjo Paterson

Poet B

Elizabeth Prentiss Elizabeth Prentiss
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 53% Poems 72% Blended 62%
Swap sides Another related pair
Banjo Paterson

Banjo Paterson

17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941 (~77)
26 live poems · English

Andrew Barton Paterson, known to generations of readers as “Banjo” Paterson, was born on 17 February 1864 at Narrambla station, near Orange in New South Wales. He died in Sydney on 5 February 1941, twelve days short of his seventy-seventh birthday. Between those dates he became one of the most familiar literary voices in Australia: poet, journalist, solicitor, war correspondent, editor, soldier, horseman, storyteller…

“I don't know that I'm wholly satisfied with any of my work. I always think I can do better.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Joy, Irony
Elizabeth Prentiss

Elizabeth Prentiss

26 October 1818 – 13 August 1878 (~60)
3 live poems · English

Elizabeth Prentiss, born Elizabeth Payson on 26 October 1818 in Portland, Maine, and dead on 13 August 1878 in Dorset, Vermont, belonged to that important company of nineteenth-century American women whose literary influence was felt most deeply in homes, churches, and private devotional reading rather than in the official institutions of literary prestige. She was a poet, hymn writer, novelist, teacher, minister’s w…

“I love you harder than I tell, or can tell you.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness

In time

Banjo Paterson
Elizabeth Prentiss
1818 1941
They overlapped for 15 years (1864–1878). When Banjo Paterson was born, Elizabeth Prentiss was about 46. Banjo Paterson was about 14 when Elizabeth Prentiss died.

On the map

Banjo Paterson

No mapped places yet.

Elizabeth Prentiss

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

Banjo Paterson: narrambla station, orange, new south wales, the man from snowy river, clancy of the overflow, waltzing matilda, the geebung polo club, the bush christening. Elizabeth Prentiss: portland, maine, dorset, vermont, more love to thee, o christ, stepping heavenward, george lewis prentiss, edward payson, second congregational church, evangelical fiction.

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.

Sunrise on the Coast
Banjo Paterson
69% world
Compare
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Elizabeth Prentiss
Sunrise on the Coast
Banjo Paterson
68%
Compare
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
Sunrise on the Coast
Banjo Paterson
67% divine
Compare
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
Song of the Artesian Water
Banjo Paterson
66% life
Compare
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
The Weather Prophet
Banjo Paterson
65%
Compare
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
Song of the Artesian Water
Banjo Paterson
64%
Compare
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Banjo Paterson: Wonder, Joy, Irony. Elizabeth Prentiss: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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