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

Walt Whitman Walt Whitman

Poet B

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth
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 70% Poems 89% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

31 May 1819 – 26 March 1892 (~73)
9 live poems · English

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in a modest farmhouse in West Hills, on Long Island, New York, into a working-class family that embodied the restless energy and struggles of early America. He was the second of nine children born to Walter Whitman, a carpenter and farmer of English descent who wrestled with financial instability, and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, whose Dutch heritage brought a touch of earthy prac…

“To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a copious, sane, gigantic offspring.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850 (~80)
51 live poems · English

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the northwestern corner of England, and died on 23 April 1850 at Rydal Mount in the Lake District. Few poets have altered English literary culture so thoroughly. With Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth helped establish the principles of British Romanticism: a new seriousness about ordinary life, a conviction that emotional experience could be…

“Poetry is the image of man and nature.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Walt Whitman
William Wordsworth
1770 1892
They overlapped for 32 years (1819–1850). When Walt Whitman was born, William Wordsworth was about 49. Walt Whitman was about 31 when William Wordsworth died.
Walt Whitman in history William Wordsworth in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,216 km separate West Hills, Long Island, New York, USA from Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Walt Whitman

William Wordsworth

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

self world life

Walt Whitman only

soul space loafe atom celebration individualism captain lincoln triumph leader civil ship

William Wordsworth only

nature romantic mind bird beauty memory social power love spiritual water freedom

From the biographies

Walt Whitman: long island, brooklyn, leaves of grass, song of myself, drum-taps, abraham lincoln, ralph waldo emerson, free verse. William Wordsworth: cockermouth, lake district, samuel taylor coleridge, the prelude, lyrical ballads, annette vallon, the borderers, the ruined cottage.

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.

Whispers of Heavenly Death
Walt Whitman
79% water
Compare
Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening
William Wordsworth
Whispers of Heavenly Death
Walt Whitman
79% death, world
Compare
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
William Wordsworth
As if a Phantom Caress’d Me
Walt Whitman
79% world
Compare
Calm is all nature
William Wordsworth
Whispers of Heavenly Death
Walt Whitman
78% grief, world
Compare
Calm is all nature
William Wordsworth
As if a Phantom Caress’d Me
Walt Whitman
78% world
Compare
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
William Wordsworth
As if a Phantom Caress’d Me
Walt Whitman
78% world, social
Compare
The Affliction of Margaret
William Wordsworth

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1819 Byron Publishes Mazeppa and the First Two Cantos of Don Juan
1819 John Keats Writes 'To Autumn' Celebrating the Season's Winds
1819 Shelley Writes Ode to the West Wind
1823 Byron Joins the Greek War of Independence
1823 Publication of 'The Poems of Jeremiah Joseph Callanan'
1824 Lord Byron Arrives in Missolonghi to Lead the Greek Forces
1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction

Walt Whitman

1830 Whitman Leaves Formal Education
1836 Whitman Works as a Journalist
1855 First Edition of 'Leaves of Grass' Published
1863 Whitman Moves to Washington, D.C.
1865 Publication of 'Drum-Taps'
1865 Whitman Meets Ralph Waldo Emerson
1873 Whitman Moves to Camden, New Jersey
1892 Final Edition of 'Leaves of Grass' Published

William Wordsworth

1778 William Wordsworth's Loss of His Mother
1783 William Wordsworth's Loss of His Father
1795 William Wordsworth's Relationship with Dorothy Wordsworth
1797 William Wordsworth's Move to Alfoxden
1798 First Publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798)
1799 William Wordsworth's Move to Dove Cottage (1799)
1805 William Wordsworth's Publication of 'The Prelude'
1814 William Wordsworth's Publication of 'The Excursion'

Emotional landscapes

Walt Whitman: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing. William Wordsworth: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

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