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

Helen Hunt Jackson Helen Hunt Jackson

Poet B

Elizabeth Stoddard Elizabeth Stoddard
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 87% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson

15 October 1830 – 12 August 1885 (~55)
3 live poems · English

Helen Hunt Jackson, born Helen Maria Fiske on 15 October 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and dead on 12 August 1885 in San Francisco, California, lived a life shaped by literary ambition, devastating bereavement, restless travel, and an increasingly fierce commitment to justice for Native peoples. She achieved wide fame in her own century as a poet, essayist, travel writer, novelist, and public intellectual. Today sh…

“The woman who creates and sustains a home, and under whose hands children grow up to be strong and pure men and women, is a creator second only to God.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
Elizabeth Stoddard

Elizabeth Stoddard

6 May 1823 – 1 August 1902 (~79)
2 live poems · English

On a spring day in 1823, in the small coastal village of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a child was born who would grow to become one of the most original and underappreciated voices in nineteenth-century American literature. Elizabeth Drew Barstow entered the world on May 6, in a town where the rhythms of the sea shaped daily existence and where salt spray and shipbuilding defined the community's character. The second…

“Is goodness, then, incompatible with the enjoyment of the senses?”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Helen Hunt Jackson
Elizabeth Stoddard
1823 1902
They overlapped for 56 years (1830–1885). When Helen Hunt Jackson was born, Elizabeth Stoddard was about 7. Elizabeth Stoddard was about 62 when Helen Hunt Jackson died.
Helen Hunt Jackson in history Elizabeth Stoddard in history Years they were given

On the map

About 162 km separate Amherst, Massachusetts, USA from Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, USA. Both have ground in Massachusetts.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Elizabeth Stoddard

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 life death autumn beauty

Helen Hunt Jackson only

october blue hour weather season seeker money unreckoned gain moth vanity

Elizabeth Stoddard only

nature november loss philosophical tradition landscape birds spring return

From the biographies

novel women

Helen Hunt Jackson: amherst, massachusetts, san francisco, california, ramona, a century of dishonor, edward bissell hunt, william sharpless jackson, emily dickinson, bits of travel at home. Elizabeth Stoddard: mattapoisett, new york city, richard henry stoddard, nathaniel hawthorne, the morgesons, two men, temple house, wheaton female seminary.

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.

October's Bright Blue Weather
Helen Hunt Jackson
87% autumn, beauty
Compare
November
Elizabeth Stoddard
October's Bright Blue Weather
Helen Hunt Jackson
78% world
Compare
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
Vanity of Vanities
Helen Hunt Jackson
76% life, death
Compare
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
Vanity of Vanities
Helen Hunt Jackson
75%
Compare
November
Elizabeth Stoddard
The Money-Seeker
Helen Hunt Jackson
71% world, life, death
Compare
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
The Money-Seeker
Helen Hunt Jackson
70%
Compare
November
Elizabeth Stoddard

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction in London
1831 HMS Beagle Begins Darwin's Survey Voyage
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction
1831 Publication of 'Canti'
1833 The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire
1834 Publication of 'Philip van Artevelde'
1836 Publication of 'Nature'

Helen Hunt Jackson

1852 Marriage to Levi Goodhue
1859 Publication of 'Verses' Collection
1865 Death of her son, Warren
1875 Move to Colorado
1880 Involvement with the Women's Club Movement
1881 Advocacy for Native American Rights
1881 Publication of 'A Century of Dishonor'
1884 Publication of 'Ramona'

Elizabeth Stoddard

1841 Move to New York City
1850 Marriage to James H. Stoddard
1862 Publication of 'The Morgesons'
1865 Publication of 'Two Men'
1870 Move to San Francisco
1874 Publication of 'The Story of the Morgesons'
1886 Publication of 'The Old Woman'

Emotional landscapes

Helen Hunt Jackson: Sorrow, Spirituality, Wonder. Elizabeth Stoddard: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality.

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