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

Felicia Dorothea Hemans Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Poet B

Edith M. Thomas Edith M. Thomas
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 76% Poems 88% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Felicia Dorothea Hemans

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

25 September 1793 – 16 May 1835 (~42)
11 live poems · English

Felicia Dorothea Hemans, born Felicia Dorothea Browne on 25 September 1793 and dead on 16 May 1835, was among the most celebrated poets of the early nineteenth century. In her lifetime she was read with an enthusiasm now difficult to imagine: her poems circulated throughout Britain, Ireland, the United States, and the British Empire; they appeared in annuals, schoolbooks, anthologies, newspapers, and domestic parlors…

“If my sister were near me now, I should lay my head down upon her shoulder and cry like a tired child.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
Edith M. Thomas

Edith M. Thomas

12 August 1854 – 13 September 1925 (~71)
2 live poems · English

Edith Matilda Thomas was born on 12 August 1854 in Chatham, Ohio, and died on 13 September 1925 in New York City. During her lifetime she was admired as one of the most accomplished American lyric poets of the late nineteenth century, praised by editors, fellow writers, and readers for verse that joined close observation of nature to emotional reserve, formal intelligence, and a searching spiritual imagination. Yet s…

“I think I never was young.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair

In time

Felicia Dorothea Hemans
Edith M. Thomas
1793 1925
Their lives did not overlap. 19 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 5,904 km separate Liverpool, England from Chatham, Ohio, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

From the biographies

women culture

Felicia Dorothea Hemans: liverpool, gwrych, abergele, casabianca, the forest sanctuary, modern greece, the sceptic, dartmoor prison. Edith M. Thomas: chatham, ohio, new york city, helen hunt jackson, a new year's masque, the inverted torch, lyrics and sonnets, northeastern ohio, romantic poetry.

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.

Bring Flowers
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
83% flowers, beauty, life
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
I Go, Sweet Friends!
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
82%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
The Dial of Flowers
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
79% flowers, life, garden
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
The Myrtle Bough
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
79%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
Thou Wakest from Rosy Sleep
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
78%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
The Landing of the Pilgrims
Felicia Dorothea Hemans
78% purpose
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

Felicia Dorothea Hemans: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Edith M. Thomas: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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