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.

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

Ben King Ben King

Poet B

Edward Rowland Sill Edward Rowland Sill
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 73% Poems 78% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ben King

Ben King

17 March 1857 – 8 April 1894 (~37)
2 live poems · English

Benjamin Franklin King Jr., known almost everywhere in print as Ben King, was born on 17 March 1857 in St. Joseph, Michigan, and died on 8 April 1894 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. His life lasted only thirty-seven years, and his reputation has never approached that of the best-known American poets of his generation. Yet King was far from insignificant in his own day. He belonged to the large, lively, and now too often…

“If I should die to-night, and you should come to my cold corpse and say, weeping and longing, I would not care.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Edward Rowland Sill

Edward Rowland Sill

29 April 1841 – 27 February 1887 (~46)
2 live poems · English

Edward Rowland Sill was born on 29 April 1841 in Windsor, Connecticut, and died on 27 February 1887 in Cleveland, Ohio. His life was short, frequently unsettled, and shadowed by poor health, yet it produced a body of poetry and prose distinguished by moral seriousness, intellectual candor, and an unusual tenderness toward ordinary human weakness. He belonged to the generation of American writers who came after the fi…

“I more and more believe the only way for ordinary mortals is to keep out of sight, and write anonymously.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Ben King
Edward Rowland Sill
1841 1894
They overlapped for 31 years (1857–1887). When Ben King was born, Edward Rowland Sill was about 16. Ben King was about 30 when Edward Rowland Sill died.
Ben King in history Edward Rowland Sill in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,066 km separate St. Joseph, Michigan, USA from Windsor, Connecticut, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Ben King

Edward Rowland Sill

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

king life

Ben King only

humor death irony obligations humorous repayment absurd mourner tramp social encounter delight

Edward Rowland Sill only

sword power courage broken friend honey clouds self

From the biographies

Ben King: st. joseph, michigan, bowling green, kentucky, if i should die to-night, late nineteenth-century, newspaper verse, comic prose, mark twain, james whitcomb riley. Edward Rowland Sill: windsor, connecticut, cleveland, ohio, the hermitage and other poems, the venus of milo and other poems, harvard divinity school, mary b. sill, university of california, 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.

The Tramp
Ben King
70% life
Compare
Living
Edward Rowland Sill
The Tramp
Ben King
68% king
Compare
Opportunity
Edward Rowland Sill
If I Should Die
Ben King
67% life
Compare
Living
Edward Rowland Sill
If I Should Die
Ben King
62% king
Compare
Opportunity
Edward Rowland Sill

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1857 Pasteur Demonstrates the Biological Basis of Fermentation
1858 Publication of 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'
1858 Publication of Ionica
1859 Discovery of Oil at Drake Well Sparks Pennsylvania Petroleum Boom
1859 First Commercial Oil Well Drilled in Titusville
1859 Publication of 'Adam Bede'
1859 The Carrington Event Aurora
1860 Publication of 'Eternal Father, Strong to Save'

Ben King

1875 Early Career as a Traveling Salesman
1880 Transition to Bank Clerk
1885 First Public Recitation
1886 Publication of First Poems
1887 Friendship with James Whitcomb Riley
1888 Marriage to Mary Ellen
1890 Publication of 'The Humorist'
1893 Final Years and Health Struggles

Edward Rowland Sill

1844 Relocation to Cuyahoga Falls
1859 Education at Yale College
1867 First Published Poem
1870 Marriage to Mary E. Sill
1876 Teaching Career at the University of California
1882 Publication of 'The Poems of Edward Rowland Sill'
1886 Illness and Declining Health
1888 Final Poems Published Posthumously

Emotional landscapes

Ben King: Irony, Sorrow, Despair. Edward Rowland Sill: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality.

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