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

John Townsend Trowbridge John Townsend Trowbridge

Poet B

Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Lord Tennyson
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 63% Poems 81% Blended 71%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Townsend Trowbridge

John Townsend Trowbridge

18 September 1827 – 12 February 1916 (~89)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of nineteenth-century American letters, John Townsend Trowbridge occupies a curious position—neither forgotten nor fully remembered, a writer whose prolific output and genuine popularity during his lifetime have faded into the scholarly margins, yet whose contribution to American literature, particularly children's and young adult fiction, deserves far greater recognition than it typically receives. B…

“I still go back occasionally to the old Leaves of Grass and find in them the same unfailing freshness and power, which repeated readings in no wise dull to the sense—a test which only master studies in literature can stand.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Anger
Listen Timeline Affinities
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 (~83)
27 live poems · English

Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…

“Lycidas was a test of any reader’s poetic instinct.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Townsend Trowbridge
Alfred Lord Tennyson
1809 1916
They overlapped for 66 years (1827–1892). When John Townsend Trowbridge was born, Alfred Lord Tennyson was about 18. John Townsend Trowbridge was about 65 when Alfred Lord Tennyson died.
John Townsend Trowbridge in history Alfred Lord Tennyson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,583 km separate Ogden, New York, USA from Somersby, Lincolnshire, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

John Townsend Trowbridge

Alfred Lord Tennyson

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

beauty

John Townsend Trowbridge only

wolves social urban suffering violence door cuba island history colonial cuban redemption

Alfred Lord Tennyson only

life world death nature desire love light fantasy absence sound power voice

From the biographies

John Townsend Trowbridge: ogden, new york, windsor stone trowbridge, father brighthopes, neighbor jackwood, underground railroad, the south: a tour of its battle-fields and ruined cities, jack hazard and his fortunes, doing his best books. Alfred Lord Tennyson: somersby, lincolnshire, victorian age, arthur henry hallam, in memoriam, the lady of shalott, the lotos-eaters, ulysses.

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.

Cuba
John Townsend Trowbridge
72% island, beauty
Compare
The Islet
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Wolves
John Townsend Trowbridge
69%
Compare
The Owl
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Cuba
John Townsend Trowbridge
68% beauty
Compare
The mountain wooded to the peak
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Cuba
John Townsend Trowbridge
68%
Compare
The Flower
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Wolves
John Townsend Trowbridge
68%
Compare
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The Wolves
John Townsend Trowbridge
67%
Compare
The Sailor Boy
Alfred Lord Tennyson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction in London
1831 HMS Beagle Begins Darwin's Survey Voyage
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction
1831 Publication of 'Canti'
1833 The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire
1834 Publication of 'Philip van Artevelde'
1836 Publication of 'Nature'

John Townsend Trowbridge

1844 Early Education and Literary Aspirations of Trowbridge
1850 Return to Boston and Literary Career Beginnings
1853 Marriage to Mary E. Smith
1857 Publication of 'The Old Farm Gate'
1867 Publication of 'The Vagabonds'
1870 Friendship with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1874 Publication of 'The Poet's Corner'
1880 Appointment as a Literary Editor

Alfred Lord Tennyson

1827 Tennyson Enters Trinity College
1829 Tennyson Wins Chancellor's Gold Medal
1833 Death of Arthur Hallam
1850 Marriage to Emily Sellwood
1850 Publication of 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'
1859 Publication of 'Idylls of the King'
1892 Tennyson's Final Poems Published
1892 Tennyson's Later Life and Death

Emotional landscapes

John Townsend Trowbridge: Sorrow, Despair, Anger. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow.

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