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

Stephen Vincent Benét Stephen Vincent Benét

Poet B

William Rose Benét William Rose Benét
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 89% Poems 82% Blended 86%
Swap sides Another related pair
Stephen Vincent Benét

Stephen Vincent Benét

22 July 1898 – 13 March 1943 (~45)
2 live poems · English

Stephen Vincent Benét was a poet, novelist, and storyteller whose voice captured the sprawling, contradictory soul of America with a warmth and vigor that few writers of his era could match. In an age when modernism often turned inward toward fragmentation and irony, Benét looked outward, embracing history, folklore, and the ordinary heroism of everyday people. His words thrum with the crack of rifles at Harpers Ferr…

“We cannot afford the creeping paralysis that destroys the effective will of democracy—the paralysis carried by hate and rancor, between class and class, person and person, party and party.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
William Rose Benét

William Rose Benét

2 February 1886 – 4 May 1950 (~64)
2 live poems · English

William Rose Benét was born on 2 February 1886 at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York, and died on 4 May 1950 in New York City. During his lifetime he became known as a poet, editor, critic, anthologist, essayist, novelist in verse, and tireless popularizer of literature. He belonged to a family unusually rich in literary talent: his younger brother was the poet and novelist Stephen Vincent Benét, author of John Brow…

“Every day was an adventure to her with the hope of accomplishing something over and above mere routine and the pursuit of pleasure.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Stephen Vincent Benét
William Rose Benét
1886 1950
They overlapped for 46 years (1898–1943). When Stephen Vincent Benét was born, William Rose Benét was about 12. William Rose Benét was about 57 when Stephen Vincent Benét died.
Stephen Vincent Benét in history William Rose Benét in history Years they were given

On the map

About 114 km separate Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA from Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, New York, USA. Both have ground in New York.

Stephen Vincent Benét

William Rose Benét

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 love

Stephen Vincent Benét only

innovator pyramid tradition innovation mind praise

William Rose Benét only

life lake cold nature shadows ghost ponies cottage animals books

From the biographies

Stephen Vincent Benét: fountain hill, harpers ferry, john brown's body, rosemary carr, pulitzer prize, the devil and daniel webster, yale university, william rose benét. William Rose Benét: fort hamilton, brooklyn, stephen vincent benét, merchants from cathay, perpetual light, the skater of ghost lake, the great white wall, the burglar of the zodiac.

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.

American Names
Stephen Vincent Benét
73% world, love
Compare
The Skater of Ghost Lake
William Rose Benét
American Names
Stephen Vincent Benét
72% world
Compare
The Ponies
William Rose Benét
The Innovator
Stephen Vincent Benét
65%
Compare
The Ponies
William Rose Benét
The Innovator
Stephen Vincent Benét
65%
Compare
The Skater of Ghost Lake
William Rose Benét

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1898 Crane's Experience in the Spanish-American War
1901 Establishment of the Nobel Prizes
1902 The Wright 1902 glider achieves practical three-axis control
1903 Publication of 'The Path of Dreams'
1903 Publication of 'The Souls of Black Folk'
1903 Wright Brothers Achieve First Powered Flight Using Wind Tunnel Research
1906 Appointment as editor of Punch
1906 Upton Sinclair Publishes 'The Jungle'

Stephen Vincent Benét

1922 Marriage to Elinor Wylie
1928 Publication of 'John Brown's Body'
1929 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1930 Relocation to New York City
1936 Publication of 'The Devil and Daniel Webster'
1944 Second Pulitzer Prize for 'Western Star'

William Rose Benét

1903 Education at Yale University
1913 Marriage to Sara Teasdale
1918 Publication of 'The Dust Which Is God'
1935 Publication of 'The Ballad of Sir John Franklin'
1941 Publication of 'The Great American Novel'
1942 Awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship
1943 Publication of 'The Last of the Great American Poets'
1950 Death of William Rose Benét

Emotional landscapes

Stephen Vincent Benét: Sorrow, Irony, Despair. William Rose Benét: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder.

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