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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

John Greenleaf Whittier John Greenleaf Whittier

Poet B

Edward Rowland Sill Edward Rowland Sill
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 77% Poems 79% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier

17 December 1807 – 7 September 1892 (~85)
2 live poems · English

John Greenleaf Whittier was born on 17 December 1807 on his family’s farm in the East Parish of Haverhill, Massachusetts, and died on 7 September 1892 in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. During his long life, the United States changed from a young republic into an industrial and continental power scarred by civil war, and Whittier became one of the most widely read literary witnesses to that transformation. He was a poe…

“What is good looking, as Horace Smith remarks, but looking good? Be good, be womanly, be gentle,—generous in your sympathies, heedful of the well-being of all around you; and, my word for it, you will not lack kind words of admiration.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Edward Rowland Sill

Edward Rowland Sill

29 April 1841 – 27 February 1887 (~46)
2 live poems · English

Edward Rowland Sill was born on 29 April 1841 in Windsor, Connecticut, and died on 27 February 1887 in Cleveland, Ohio. His life was short, frequently unsettled, and shadowed by poor health, yet it produced a body of poetry and prose distinguished by moral seriousness, intellectual candor, and an unusual tenderness toward ordinary human weakness. He belonged to the generation of American writers who came after the fi…

“I more and more believe the only way for ordinary mortals is to keep out of sight, and write anonymously.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Greenleaf Whittier
Edward Rowland Sill
1807 1892
They overlapped for 47 years (1841–1887). When Edward Rowland Sill was born, John Greenleaf Whittier was about 34. John Greenleaf Whittier was about 80 when Edward Rowland Sill died.
John Greenleaf Whittier in history Edward Rowland Sill in history Years they were given

On the map

About 165 km separate Haverhill, Massachusetts, United States from Windsor, Connecticut, USA. Shared ground: United States.

John Greenleaf Whittier

Edward Rowland Sill

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 self

John Greenleaf Whittier only

judge social unfulfilled desires simplicity class encounter love school childhood loss enduring

Edward Rowland Sill only

sword power king courage broken friend honey clouds

From the biographies

religious

John Greenleaf Whittier: haverhill, new hampshire, william lloyd garrison, american anti-slavery society, quaker, legends of new england, poems written during the progress of the abolition question, ichabod. Edward Rowland Sill: windsor, connecticut, cleveland, ohio, the hermitage and other poems, the venus of milo and other poems, harvard divinity school, mary b. sill, university of california, transcendentalism.

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.

Maud Muller
John Greenleaf Whittier
71% life, self
Compare
Living
Edward Rowland Sill
In School-Days
John Greenleaf Whittier
70% life
Compare
Living
Edward Rowland Sill
Maud Muller
John Greenleaf Whittier
68%
Compare
Opportunity
Edward Rowland Sill
In School-Days
John Greenleaf Whittier
67%
Compare
Opportunity
Edward Rowland Sill

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1842 First Pale Lager Brewed in Pilsen
1845 Great Famine in Ireland (1845)
1845 The Outbreak of the Irish Potato Famine
1845 Thoreau's Walden Experiment Begins
1846 Publication of Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
1846 Thoreau's Arrest for Civil Disobedience
1847 Publication of Agnes Grey
1848 Publication of The Biglow Papers

John Greenleaf Whittier

1826 Whittier's First Published Poem
1830 Involvement in the Abolitionist Movement
1831 Publication of 'Legends of New England'
1837 Publication of 'Poems Written during the Progress of the Abolition Question'
1840 Whittier's Involvement in the Anti-Slavery Society
1846 Publication of 'Voices of Freedom'
1856 Whittier's Relocation to Amesbury
1880 Whittier's Involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement

Edward Rowland Sill

1844 Relocation to Cuyahoga Falls
1859 Education at Yale College
1867 First Published Poem
1870 Marriage to Mary E. Sill
1876 Teaching Career at the University of California
1882 Publication of 'The Poems of Edward Rowland Sill'
1886 Illness and Declining Health
1888 Final Poems Published Posthumously

Emotional landscapes

John Greenleaf Whittier: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. Edward Rowland Sill: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality.

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