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

Carl Sandburg Carl Sandburg

Poet B

Eugene Field Eugene Field
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 69% Poems 85% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg

6 January 1878 – 22 July 1967 (~89)
19 live poems · English

Carl Sandburg, born 6 January 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois, and dead 22 July 1967 in Flat Rock, North Carolina, became one of the most recognizable American writers of the twentieth century: a poet of factories and prairies, a journalist of civic life, a collector and performer of folk songs, a novelist and children’s writer, and the immensely popular biographer of Abraham Lincoln. Few writers worked so deliberately t…

“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder
Eugene Field

Eugene Field

2 September 1850 – 4 November 1895 (~45)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American literature, few figures occupy such a unique and enduring position as Eugene Field, the beloved "Children's Poet" whose gentle verses about childhood, dreams, and imagination have captivated readers for over a century. Born into the rough-and-tumble world of frontier America and dying at the height of the Gilded Age, Field's life spanned a transformative period in American history, yet his…

“I should like to own a big astronomical telescope and a twenty-four-tune music-box.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Wonder

In time

Carl Sandburg
Eugene Field
1850 1967
They overlapped for 18 years (1878–1895). When Carl Sandburg was born, Eugene Field was about 28. Carl Sandburg was about 17 when Eugene Field died.

On the map

About 259 km separate Galesburg, Illinois, USA from St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Both have ground in Illinois.

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

Carl Sandburg: galesburg, flat rock, abraham lincoln, chicago, lillian steichen, chicago poems, cornhuskers, smoke and steel. Eugene Field: st. louis, gilded age, roswell field, frances reed field, mary field french, williams college, knox college, st. joseph gazette.

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.

Mag
Carl Sandburg
72% social
Compare
Human Nature
Eugene Field
Murmerings in a Field Hospital
Carl Sandburg
72% field, world
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
Mag
Carl Sandburg
70% love
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
Choices
Carl Sandburg
70% bread
Compare
Human Nature
Eugene Field
Murmerings in a Field Hospital
Carl Sandburg
70% field
Compare
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Eugene Field
Fish Crier
Carl Sandburg
69%
Compare
Human Nature
Eugene Field

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Carl Sandburg: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder. Eugene Field: Tenderness, Joy, Wonder.

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