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

Ella Wheeler Wilcox Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Poet B

Edna St. Vincent Millay Edna St. Vincent Millay
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 79% Poems 91% Blended 85%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

5 November 1850 – 30 October 1919 (~69)
22 live poems · English

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born on 5 November 1850 in Johnstown Center, Wisconsin, a rural community whose fields, seasons, family routines, and wide horizons remained central to her imaginative life. She died on 30 October 1919 at her home in Short Beach, Connecticut, only days before her sixty-ninth birthday. Between those dates she became one of the most widely read poets in the United States. Her name was known in p…

“The man who is not afraid to use his small means to assist others need not fear poverty.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

22 February 1892 – 19 October 1950 (~58)
100 live poems · English

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22 February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, and died on 19 October 1950 at her home in Austerlitz, New York. During her lifetime she became one of the most visible and commercially successful poets in the United States: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a celebrated public reader, a playwright, a lyricist, a political writer, and an emblem of the modern, sexually independent “New Woman.” Her fame…

“The poet is not a man who says what he thinks, but a man who says what he feels.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Confessional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Edna St. Vincent Millay
1850 1950
They overlapped for 28 years (1892–1919). When Edna St. Vincent Millay was born, Ella Wheeler Wilcox was about 42. Edna St. Vincent Millay was about 27 when Ella Wheeler Wilcox died.

On the map

About 1,598 km separate Johnstown Center, Wisconsin, USA from Rockland, Maine, USA. Both have ground in New York.

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

Ella Wheeler Wilcox only

Edna St. Vincent Millay only

From the biographies

women woman

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: johnstown center, short beach, solitude, poems of passion, robert m. wilcox, positive thinking, the voice of the voiceless, women's suffrage. Edna St. Vincent Millay: rockland, maine, austerlitz, new york, pulitzer prize, renascence, caroline b. dow, vassar college, greenwich village, a few figs from thistles.

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.

Desolation
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
83%
Compare
Sorrow
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time and Love
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
83% love, memory
Compare
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied…
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Desolation
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
82% love
Compare
Alms
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Desolation
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
82% love, loss
Compare
Ebb
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Desolation
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
81% love
Compare
Ashes of Life
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time and Love
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
81% love
Compare
Thursday
Edna St. Vincent Millay

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. Edna St. Vincent Millay: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

Compare their emotional landscapes
Skip to main content