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

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Poet B

Henry Van Dyke Henry Van Dyke
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.

Somewhat related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 55% Blended 55%
Swap sides Another related pair
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861 (~55)
2 live poems · English

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806, at Coxhoe Hall in County Durham, England, the eldest of twelve children to Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. Her arrival marked the first in her family born in England in over two centuries, as the Barrett fortune stemmed from vast sugar plantations in Jamaica. The family soon moved to Hope End, a sprawling estate near Ledbury in Herefordshire…

“For I think the world wider than I once thought it, and I see God's love broader than I once saw it.”

Neighbourhood: Love Poets, Political Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Henry Van Dyke

Henry Van Dyke

10 November 1852 – 10 April 1933 (~81)
1 live poem · English

Henry Van Dyke was born on 10 November 1852 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, then a distinct community on the edge of Philadelphia and now part of the city. He died on 10 April 1933 in Princeton, New Jersey. During the eighty years between those dates, he became one of the most recognizable public literary figures in the United States: a Presbyterian minister, popular preacher, Princeton professor, poet, essayist, noveli…

“Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember only what other people have done for you?”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Wonder, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Henry Van Dyke
1806 1933
They overlapped for 10 years (1852–1861). When Henry Van Dyke was born, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was about 46. Henry Van Dyke was about 9 when Elizabeth Barrett Browning died.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning in history Henry Van Dyke in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,490 km separate Durham, England from Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Henry Van Dyke

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

death

Elizabeth Barrett Browning only

love sonnet temporal barrett life grief prospect self window spiritual landscape

Henry Van Dyke only

ship shore sight horizon world

From the biographies

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: county durham, hope end, the battle of marathon, the seraphim and other poems, the cry of the children, robert browning, sonnets from the portuguese, aurora leigh. Henry Van Dyke: germantown, princeton, ellen reid, the story of the other wise man, joyful, joyful, we adore thee, little rivers, fisherman's luck, the poetry of tennyson.

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 Prospect
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
80% death
Compare
I Am Standing Upon the Seashore
Henry Van Dyke
How Do I Love Thee?
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
68%
Compare
I Am Standing Upon the Seashore
Henry Van Dyke

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1854 John Snow Traces the Broad Street Pump
1854 Publication of 'Walden'
1856 Invention of the Bessemer Process for Mass Steel Production
1856 Mauveine Synthetic Dye Invention
1856 Perkin's Accidental Discovery of Mauveine
1857 Pasteur Demonstrates the Biological Basis of Fermentation
1858 Publication of 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'
1858 Publication of Ionica

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1816 Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Early Education
1820 Publication of 'The Battle of Marathon'
1838 Publication of 'The Seraphim and Other Poems'
1844 Publication of 'Poems' Collection
1846 Marriage to Robert Browning
1850 Publication of 'Sonnets from the Portuguese'
1856 Elizabeth Barrett Browning Writes 'Aurora Leigh': The Poetic Woman Unbounded
1860 Health Decline and Use of Morphine

Henry Van Dyke

1873 Education at Princeton University
1877 Graduation from Princeton Theological Seminary
1896 Publication of 'The Story of the Other Wise Man'
1897 Publication of 'The Builders and Other Poems'
1904 Publication of 'Music and Other Poems'
1913 Appointment as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands
1915 Publication of 'The Spirit of America'

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Spirituality, Longing, Tenderness. Henry Van Dyke: Peace, Wonder, Sorrow.

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