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

Edgar Lee Masters Edgar Lee Masters

Poet B

Edwin Markham Edwin Markham
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 75% Poems 89% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 – 5 March 1950 (~82)
25 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American literature, few poets have captured the essence of small-town life with such unflinching honesty and profound empathy as Edgar Lee Masters. Born in the twilight of the nineteenth century and dying in the shadow of World War II, Masters lived through one of the most transformative periods in American history. His masterwork, Spoon River Anthology, revolutionized American poetry by giving vo…

“She knew that poetry is thought and feeling, imagery and music rather than rhyme and meter.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing
Edwin Markham

Edwin Markham

23 April 1852 – 7 March 1940 (~88)
3 live poems · English

In the last week of December 1898, an aging schoolteacher in California completed a poem that would transform American literature and launch a national debate about labor, justice, and the human cost of industrial progress. Within weeks, Edwin Markham's "The Man with the Hoe" catapulted him from obscurity to international fame, earning him recognition as the "Dean of American Poetry" and the "Laureate of Labor." His…

“The crest and crowning of all good, life's final star, is Brotherhood.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace

In time

Edgar Lee Masters
Edwin Markham
1852 1950
They overlapped for 73 years (1868–1940). When Edgar Lee Masters was born, Edwin Markham was about 16. Edgar Lee Masters was about 72 when Edwin Markham died.

On the map

About 813 km separate Garnett, Kansas, USA from Oregon City, Oregon Territory, USA. Shared ground: United States.

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

social power

Edgar Lee Masters: garnett, kansas, lewiston, illinois, spoon river anthology, william marion reedy, chicago renaissance, the blood of the prophets, a book of verses, helen m. jenkins. Edwin Markham: the man with the hoe, california, oregon city, labor activism, anna catherine murphy, lincoln and other poems, poet highwayman, vacaville college.

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.

Benjamin Pantier
Edgar Lee Masters
81% life
Compare
An Epitaph
Edwin Markham
Fletcher McGee
Edgar Lee Masters
80% life, soul
Compare
An Epitaph
Edwin Markham
Doctor Meyers
Edgar Lee Masters
80% life, self
Compare
An Epitaph
Edwin Markham
The Hill
Edgar Lee Masters
79% death, life
Compare
An Epitaph
Edwin Markham
Angela Sanger
Edgar Lee Masters
78% love
Compare
The Never-Old
Edwin Markham
My Light with Yours
Edgar Lee Masters
77% spiritual
Compare
An Epitaph
Edwin Markham

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Edgar Lee Masters: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing. Edwin Markham: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace.

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