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 life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

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.

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

Henry Augustin Beers Henry Augustin Beers

Poet B

John Vance Cheney John Vance Cheney
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 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
Henry Augustin Beers

Henry Augustin Beers

2 July 1847 – 7 September 1926 (~79)
1 live poem · English

In the long history of American literary scholarship, few figures embody the transition from nineteenth-century genteel letters to modern academic criticism as thoroughly as Henry Augustin Beers. Born on July 2, 1847, in Buffalo, New York, and dying on September 7, 1926, in New Haven, Connecticut, Beers spent nearly his entire adult life at Yale University, where his slight frame became a beloved fixture on campus fo…

“Shakspere is the most universal of writers. He touches more men at more points than Homer, or Dante, or Goethe. The deepest wisdom, the sweetest poetry, the widest range of character, are combined in his plays.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Vance Cheney

John Vance Cheney

29 December 1848 – 1 May 1922 (~74)
1 live poem · English

In the winter twilight of a small upstate New York village, where snow lay thick upon the Genesee Valley, John Vance Cheney was born on December 29, 1848, in Groveland, New York. His life would span a transformative period in American literature, carrying him from the fading embers of Romanticism to the threshold of Modernism, from the dusty offices of a country law practice to the grand reading rooms of two of Ameri…

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

In time

Henry Augustin Beers
John Vance Cheney
1847 1926
They overlapped for 75 years (1848–1922). When John Vance Cheney was born, Henry Augustin Beers was about 1. Henry Augustin Beers was about 75 when John Vance Cheney died.
Henry Augustin Beers in history John Vance Cheney in history Years they were given

On the map

About 91 km separate Buffalo, New York, USA from Groveland, New York, USA. Both have ground in New York.

Henry Augustin Beers

John Vance Cheney

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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Henry Augustin Beers only

wilderness forest revelation secret

John Vance Cheney only

life heart fame happiness

From the biographies

Henry Augustin Beers: buffalo, new york, new haven, connecticut, yale university, mary florence heaton, james russell lowell, ralph waldo emerson, odds and ends, a century of american literature. John Vance Cheney: groveland, new york, abigail perkins vance cheney, thistle-drift, the man with the hoe - a reply, century magazine, free public library of san francisco, newberry library, edwin markham.

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.

Ecce in Deserto
Henry Augustin Beers
75%
Compare
The Happiest Heart
John Vance Cheney

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1848 Communist Manifesto Published
1848 Publication of 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'
1848 Publication of 'Once in Royal David's City'
1848 Publication of The Biglow Papers
1848 Publication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
1850 Publication of 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'
1851 Publication of Moby-Dick
1854 John Snow Traces the Broad Street Pump

Henry Augustin Beers

1855 Early Education in Hartford
1869 Graduation from Yale College
1885 Publication of 'The Wayside Inn'
1889 Appointment as Professor at Yale
1899 Publication of 'A History of English Romanticism'
1910 Publication of 'The Poet's Poet'
1917 Retirement from Yale University
1926 Death of Henry Augustin Beers

John Vance Cheney

1865 Education in Geneseo, New York
1871 Marriage to Abigail Perkins Vance
1873 First Major Publication in 'The Century'
1873 Relocation to California
1875 Teaching Music in California
1885 Publication of 'The Poems of John Vance Cheney'
1890 Friendship with John Burroughs
1920 Publication of 'The Poet's Quest'

Emotional landscapes

Henry Augustin Beers: Wonder, Longing, Spirituality. John Vance Cheney: Peace, Spirituality, Joy.

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