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

Mark Twain Mark Twain

Poet B

Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau
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 70% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
Mark Twain

Mark Twain

30 November 1835 – 21 April 1910 (~75)
1 live poem · English

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who became Mark Twain, was born on 30 November 1835 in the tiny village of Florida, Missouri, and died on 21 April 1910 in Redding, Connecticut. Few American writers have occupied so many roles in the national imagination: printer, river pilot, prospector, newspaper correspondent, lecturer, novelist, travel writer, social critic, entrepreneur, public celebrity, and, in a less frequently emph…

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it’s because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

12 July 1817 – 6 May 1862 (~45)
2 live poems · English

Henry David Thoreau was born on 12 July 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, and died there on 6 May 1862, only forty-four years later. During that comparatively brief life he became, almost paradoxically, one of the most durable presences in American letters. He was a poet, essayist, lecturer, surveyor, pencil maker, teacher, abolitionist, amateur scientist, and uncommonly attentive walker. Yet these labels, though usefu…

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Irony, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Mark Twain
Henry David Thoreau
1817 1910
They overlapped for 28 years (1835–1862). When Mark Twain was born, Henry David Thoreau was about 18. Mark Twain was about 27 when Henry David Thoreau died.
Mark Twain in history Henry David Thoreau in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,743 km separate Florida, Missouri, USA from Concord, Massachusetts, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Mark Twain

Henry David Thoreau

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

Mark Twain only

death warm summer wind grief earth grass

Henry David Thoreau only

life spiritual wealth poverty poor social rich relation apples ground return

From the biographies

Mark Twain: florida, missouri, redding, connecticut, halley's comet, olivia langdon, the adventures of tom sawyer, adventures of huckleberry finn, the gilded age, the celebrated jumping frog of calaveras county. Henry David Thoreau: concord, massachusetts, john thoreau, ralph waldo emerson, civil disobedience, walden, a week on the concord and merrimack rivers, 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.

Warm Summer Sun
Mark Twain
69% world
Compare
Among the worst of men that ever lived
Henry David Thoreau
Warm Summer Sun
Mark Twain
67% world
Compare
Poverty
Henry David Thoreau

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1836 Publication of 'Nature'
1837 Publication of 'Life of Sir Walter Scott'
1842 First Pale Lager Brewed in Pilsen
1845 Great Famine in Ireland (1845)
1845 The Outbreak of the Irish Potato Famine
1845 Thoreau's Walden Experiment Begins
1846 Publication of Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
1846 Thoreau's Arrest for Civil Disobedience

Mark Twain

1847 Mark Twain's Early Education and Apprenticeship
1867 Travel to Europe and the Holy Land
1870 Marriage to Olivia Langdon
1874 Publication of 'A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It'
1874 Relocation to Hartford, Connecticut
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1904 The Death of Olivia Langdon
1905 Publication of 'The War Prayer'

Henry David Thoreau

1833 Thoreau Enrolls at Harvard College
1838 Meeting Ralph Waldo Emerson
1840 First Publications in The Dial
1842 Thoreau's Friendship with John Thoreau Jr.
1845 Thoreau's Walden Experiment Begins
1846 Thoreau's Arrest for Civil Disobedience
1850 Thoreau's Involvement in the Anti-Slavery Movement
1854 Publication of 'Walden'

Emotional landscapes

Mark Twain: Tenderness, Peace, Longing. Henry David Thoreau: Spirituality, Irony, Wonder.

Skip to main content