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

Trumbull Stickney Trumbull Stickney

Poet B

Edward Rowland Sill Edward Rowland Sill
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 76% Poems 83% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Trumbull Stickney

Trumbull Stickney

20 June 1874 – 11 October 1904 (~30)
2 live poems · English

Joseph Trumbull Stickney, known almost always as Trumbull Stickney, was born on 20 June 1874 in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in Boston on 11 October 1904. His brief life, ending when he was only thirty, has encouraged the familiar image of the doomed young poet whose promise exceeds his surviving achievement. That image is not wholly wrong, but it is too simple. Stickney was not merely a promising lyricist interrupt…

“You refer to the last thing excavated on classic soil, my own torso. It proves not to be an antique at all, but a work of a New England sculptor who was wrecked in a dory off the Peloponnesian Coast.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Edward Rowland Sill

Edward Rowland Sill

29 April 1841 – 27 February 1887 (~46)
2 live poems · English

Edward Rowland Sill was born on 29 April 1841 in Windsor, Connecticut, and died on 27 February 1887 in Cleveland, Ohio. His life was short, frequently unsettled, and shadowed by poor health, yet it produced a body of poetry and prose distinguished by moral seriousness, intellectual candor, and an unusual tenderness toward ordinary human weakness. He belonged to the generation of American writers who came after the fi…

“I more and more believe the only way for ordinary mortals is to keep out of sight, and write anonymously.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Trumbull Stickney
Edward Rowland Sill
1841 1904
They overlapped for 14 years (1874–1887). When Trumbull Stickney was born, Edward Rowland Sill was about 33. Trumbull Stickney was about 13 when Edward Rowland Sill died.
Trumbull Stickney in history Edward Rowland Sill in history Years they were given

On the map

About 6,051 km separate Geneva, Switzerland from Windsor, Connecticut, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Trumbull Stickney

Edward Rowland Sill

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.

Trumbull Stickney only

world hour divine presence past lake boatman heart beauty memory vitality

Edward Rowland Sill only

sword power king courage broken life friend honey clouds self

From the biographies

Trumbull Stickney: geneva, boston, harvard college, william vaughn moody, george santayana, dramatic lyrics, greek tragedy, american school of classical studies. Edward Rowland Sill: windsor, connecticut, cleveland, ohio, the hermitage and other poems, the venus of milo and other poems, harvard divinity school, mary b. sill, university of california, transcendentalism.

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.

Live blindly and upon the hour
Trumbull Stickney
81%
Compare
Living
Edward Rowland Sill
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney
75%
Compare
Living
Edward Rowland Sill
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney
70%
Compare
Opportunity
Edward Rowland Sill
Live blindly and upon the hour
Trumbull Stickney
69%
Compare
Opportunity
Edward Rowland Sill

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'

Trumbull Stickney

1886 Trumbull Stickney's Early Education
1891 Enrollment at Harvard University
1894 Publication of First Poems
1895 Friendship with William Vaughn Moody
1896 Graduation from Harvard University
1900 Publication of 'The Poems of Trumbull Stickney'
1901 Illness and Declining Health
1902 Final Years in Paris

Edward Rowland Sill

1844 Relocation to Cuyahoga Falls
1859 Education at Yale College
1867 First Published Poem
1870 Marriage to Mary E. Sill
1876 Teaching Career at the University of California
1882 Publication of 'The Poems of Edward Rowland Sill'
1886 Illness and Declining Health
1888 Final Poems Published Posthumously

Emotional landscapes

Trumbull Stickney: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing. Edward Rowland Sill: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality.

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