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

Robert W. Service Robert W. Service

Poet B

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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 68% Blended 68%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert W. Service

Robert W. Service

16 January 1874 – 11 September 1958 (~84)
1 live poem · English

Robert William Service was born on 16 January 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England, and died on 11 September 1958 at Lancieux, in Brittany, France. Few poets have occupied quite the cultural territory that Service came to possess. He was not, by his own candid admission, a poet of intricate philosophical argument or formal innovation. He called much of what he wrote “verse” rather than “poetry,” a distinction that re…

“I am an average sort of person who doesn't take anything seriously, least of all himself.”

Neighbourhood: Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Fear, Despair, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882 (~75)
69 live poems · English

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on 27 February 1807 in Portland, Maine, then a bustling coastal town in Massachusetts, and died on 24 March 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his lifetime he became, by a considerable margin, the most famous American poet of the nineteenth century. His verses were memorized in schools, recited in parlors, printed in newspapers, sung, parodied, and carried across the Atlantic…

“The heart, like the mind, has a memory. And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes of the past.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Robert W. Service
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807 1958
They overlapped for 9 years (1874–1882). When Robert W. Service was born, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was about 67. Robert W. Service was about 8 when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died.
Robert W. Service in history Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in history Years they were given

On the map

About 4,886 km separate Preston, Lancashire, England from Portland, Maine, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Robert W. Service

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

life death

Robert W. Service only

enduring difficulty resilience surrender quitter perseverance

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow only

world nature memory divine grief spiritual loss love beauty suffering harvest voice

From the biographies

gave

Robert W. Service: preston, bard of the yukon, the shooting of dan mcgrew, the cremation of sam mcgee, songs of a sourdough, the spell of the yukon, dawson city, klondike gold rush. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: portland maine, bowdoin college, nathaniel hawthorne, frances appleton, paul revere’s ride, the village blacksmith, the song of hiawatha, outre-mer.

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 Quitter
Robert W. Service
75% enduring, life, death
Compare
A Psalm of Life
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
74% life, death
Compare
Killed at the Ford
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
74% life, death
Compare
The Wind Over the Chimney
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
72% life
Compare
The Village Blacksmith
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
71% life
Compare
The Golden Mile-Stone
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Quitter
Robert W. Service
71% life
Compare
Loss and Gain
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1874 Hardy Marries Emma Gifford in London
1874 Publication of 'Music and Moonlight'
1874 Publication of 'Romances sans paroles'
1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus

Robert W. Service

1879 Service's Move to Scotland
1896 Service's Departure for Canada
1903 Service's Employment at the Canadian Bank of Commerce
1907 Publication of 'Songs of a Sourdough'
1912 Service's Move to France
1915 Service's Return to Canada
1916 Publication of 'The Spell of the Yukon'
1950 Service's Final Years in France

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1821 Longfellow Enters Bowdoin College
1826 Longfellow's First European Sojourn
1831 Marriage to Mary Storer Potter
1835 Death of First Wife Mary Potter Longfellow
1836 Appointment to Harvard Professorship
1839 Publication of Voices of the Night
1843 Marriage to Frances 'Fanny' Appleton
1861 Death of Second Wife Fanny Appleton Longfellow

Emotional landscapes

Robert W. Service: Fear, Despair, Sorrow. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder.

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