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

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy

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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 71% Poems 92% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928 (~88)
41 live poems · English

Thomas Hardy stands as one of the most significant literary figures of the Victorian and early modern periods, a writer whose novels explored the tragic dimensions of human experience with unflinching honesty and whose poetry achieved a stark beauty that influenced generations of twentieth-century poets. Born on June 2, 1840, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England, and dying on January 11, 1928, in Max Gate, Dorchest…

“Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
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

Thomas Hardy
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807 1928
They overlapped for 43 years (1840–1882). When Thomas Hardy was born, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was about 33. Thomas Hardy was about 42 when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died.
Thomas Hardy in history Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,005 km separate Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England from Portland, Maine, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Thomas Hardy

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 memory death world love suffering

Thomas Hardy only

woman social past landscape dead rural self rain military faith

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow only

nature divine grief spiritual loss beauty harvest voice history light

From the biographies

Thomas Hardy: higher bockhampton, dorset, egdon heath, emma lavinia gifford, far from the madding crowd, the return of the native, the mayor of casterbridge, tess of the d'urbervilles. 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 Self-Unseeing
Thomas Hardy
85%
Compare
The Open Window
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I Look into My Glass
Thomas Hardy
84% life
Compare
Weariness
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Self-Unseeing
Thomas Hardy
83% memory
Compare
A Gleam of Sunshine
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Voice
Thomas Hardy
83% loss
Compare
The Open Window
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Rain on a Grave
Thomas Hardy
83%
Compare
A Gleam of Sunshine
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Shut Out that Moon
Thomas Hardy
83% world
Compare
The Open Window
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

Thomas Hardy

1857 Hardy's Friendship with Horace Moule Begins
1870 Hardy Meets Emma Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall
1873 Horace Moule Commits Suicide
1874 Hardy Marries Emma Gifford in London
1885 Hardy Moves into Max Gate, His Self-Designed Home
1895 Publication of Jude the Obscure, Hardy's Final Novel
1912 Hardy's First Wife Emma Dies at Max Gate
1928 Hardy's Heart Buried with Emma, Ashes in Westminster Abbey

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

Thomas Hardy: Sorrow, Longing, Despair. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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