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

Henry Scott Holland Henry Scott Holland

Poet B

Marsden Hartley Marsden Hartley
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 61% Blended 61%
Swap sides Another related pair
Henry Scott Holland

Henry Scott Holland

27 January 1847 – 17 March 1918 (~71)
1 live poem · English

Henry Scott Holland was born on 27 January 1847 at Ledbury, Herefordshire, into a world of Anglican privilege, classical education, and public duty. He died on 17 March 1918 in Oxford, at the close of a life spent attempting to make Christianity answerable to the moral crises of modern society. He was not, in the ordinary sense, a poet: he did not build his reputation through volumes of verse, nor did he belong to th…

“Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so well together is untouched, unchanged.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley

4 January 1877 – 2 September 1943 (~66)
1 live poem · English

Marsden Hartley stands as one of the most fascinating yet often overlooked figures in American modernism—a man who moved between painting and poetry with equal fervor, whose work captured the raw, untamed spirit of early twentieth-century artistic experimentation. Though primarily remembered as a visual artist, Hartley's literary output reveals a sensibility equally attuned to the power of words as to the force of co…

“The loneliest place in the world is the human heart.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Henry Scott Holland
Marsden Hartley
1847 1943
They overlapped for 42 years (1877–1918). When Marsden Hartley was born, Henry Scott Holland was about 30. Marsden Hartley was about 41 when Henry Scott Holland died.
Henry Scott Holland in history Marsden Hartley in history Years they were given

On the map

About 4,926 km separate Ledbury, Herefordshire, England from Lewiston, Maine, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Henry Scott Holland

Marsden Hartley

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.

Henry Scott Holland only

death dead life memory relationship love grief room voice name

Marsden Hartley only

fish world beauty creation moon eyes damsons divine

From the biographies

Henry Scott Holland: ledbury, herefordshire, oxford, reverend george henry holland, charlotte dorothy, death is nothing at all, creed and character, christian social union. Marsden Hartley: lewiston, maine, cleveland school of art, william merritt chase, alfred stieglitz, war motif series, karl von freyburg, twenty-five poems, androscoggin.

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.

All is Well
Henry Scott Holland
68%
Compare
Fishmonger
Marsden Hartley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'

Henry Scott Holland

1866 Matriculation at Balliol College, Oxford
1872 Ordination as Deacon
1874 Ordination as Priest
1876 Appointment as Senior Student at Christ Church
1890 Publication of 'The Light of the World'
1897 Involvement with the Christian Social Union
1908 Publication of 'The Church and the Future'
1918 Death of Henry Scott Holland

Marsden Hartley

1892 Family Relocation to Cleveland
1909 Move to New York City
1912 Friendship with Alfred Stieglitz
1913 First Major Exhibition in New York
1914 Loss of a Close Friend
1914 Travel to Europe
1930 Return to Maine
1937 Publication of 'The Maine Poems'

Emotional landscapes

Henry Scott Holland: Peace, Spirituality, Tenderness. Marsden Hartley: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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