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 Bailey Aldrich Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Poet B

Edgar Lee Masters Edgar Lee Masters
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 72% Poems 83% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

11 November 1836 – 19 March 1907 (~71)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American letters, Thomas Bailey Aldrich occupies a curious position—neither forgotten nor fully celebrated, he stands as a bridge figure between the rough-hewn democracy of antebellum American literature and the refined aestheticism that would characterize the Gilded Age. Born into a nation still finding its literary voice and dying in an America confidently asserting its cultural sophistication, A…

“When he dies, this phantasmal personality fades away, and the author lives only in the impression created by his own literature.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Peace
Edgar Lee Masters

Edgar Lee Masters

23 August 1868 – 5 March 1950 (~82)
25 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American literature, few poets have captured the essence of small-town life with such unflinching honesty and profound empathy as Edgar Lee Masters. Born in the twilight of the nineteenth century and dying in the shadow of World War II, Masters lived through one of the most transformative periods in American history. His masterwork, Spoon River Anthology, revolutionized American poetry by giving vo…

“The greatest poetry is that which founds itself upon the truth which is the beautiful, and the beautiful which is the truth.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing

In time

Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Edgar Lee Masters
1836 1950
They overlapped for 40 years (1868–1907). When Edgar Lee Masters was born, Thomas Bailey Aldrich was about 32. Edgar Lee Masters was about 39 when Thomas Bailey Aldrich died.

On the map

About 2,124 km separate Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA from Garnett, Kansas, USA. Shared ground: United States.

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

From the biographies

social

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: portsmouth, new hampshire, new orleans, lilian woodman, the bells: a collection of chimes, the ballad of babie bell, shiloh: a requiem, the story of a bad boy, james russell lowell. Edgar Lee Masters: garnett, kansas, lewiston, illinois, spoon river anthology, william marion reedy, chicago renaissance, the blood of the prophets, a book of verses, helen m. jenkins.

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.

Memory
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
79% memory
Compare
I Shall Never See You Again
Edgar Lee Masters
A Touch of Nature
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
77% nature, life
Compare
Angela Sanger
Edgar Lee Masters
Memory
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
76% memory
Compare
By the Waters of Babylon
Edgar Lee Masters
A Touch of Nature
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
75% nature, life, world
Compare
Wild Birds
Edgar Lee Masters
Memory
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
74%
Compare
Kildeer
Edgar Lee Masters
A Touch of Nature
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
74% nature, world
Compare
Kildeer
Edgar Lee Masters

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Longing, Wonder, Peace. Edgar Lee Masters: Sorrow, Spirituality, Longing.

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