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

Susan Coolidge Susan Coolidge

Poet B

Alice Cary Alice Cary
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 66% Poems 85% Blended 74%
Swap sides Another related pair
Susan Coolidge

Susan Coolidge

29 January 1835 – 9 April 1905 (~70)
4 live poems · English

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who wrote under the enduringly cheerful name Susan Coolidge, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on 29 January 1835, and died in Newport, Rhode Island, on 9 April 1905. She occupies a central place in the history of American children’s literature, though her reputation has often rested too narrowly on a single title: What Katy Did (1872). That novel and its sequels made her one of the best-known writ…

“There is a saving grace in truth which helps truth-tellers through the worst of their troubles.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
Alice Cary

Alice Cary

26 April 1820 – 12 February 1871 (~51)
2 live poems · English

Alice Cary was born on 26 April 1820 in Mount Healthy, Ohio, then a small rural community north of Cincinnati, and died in New York City on 12 February 1871. During her lifetime she became one of the most widely read American women poets of the nineteenth century, as well as a successful novelist, sketch writer, editor, lecturer, and literary hostess. Her name was once familiar in households that memorized poems, san…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Wonder

In time

Susan Coolidge
Alice Cary
1820 1905
They overlapped for 37 years (1835–1871). When Susan Coolidge was born, Alice Cary was about 15. Susan Coolidge was about 36 when Alice Cary died.

On the map

About 349 km separate Cleveland, Ohio, USA from Mount Healthy, Ohio, USA. Both have ground in Ohio.

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

domestic women social

Susan Coolidge: cleveland, newport, what katy did, katy carr, victorian domestic fiction, civil war nurse, theodore dwight woolsey, eyebright. Alice Cary: mount healthy, new york city, phoebe cary, the female poets of america, poems of alice and phoebe cary, clovernook, hagar: a story of to-day, nearer home.

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.

Prelude
Susan Coolidge
81%
Compare
Rich, Though Poor
Alice Cary
Prelude
Susan Coolidge
75%
Compare
The West Country
Alice Cary
Ebb-Tide
Susan Coolidge
74%
Compare
Rich, Though Poor
Alice Cary
When?
Susan Coolidge
73% life
Compare
Rich, Though Poor
Alice Cary
New Every Morning
Susan Coolidge
73% hope, life
Compare
Rich, Though Poor
Alice Cary
New Every Morning
Susan Coolidge
72%
Compare
The West Country
Alice Cary

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Susan Coolidge: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace. Alice Cary: Irony, Sorrow, Wonder.

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