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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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 Prentiss Elizabeth Prentiss

Poet B

Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson
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 73% Poems 86% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Elizabeth Prentiss

Elizabeth Prentiss

26 October 1818 – 13 August 1878 (~60)
3 live poems · English

Elizabeth Prentiss, born Elizabeth Payson on 26 October 1818 in Portland, Maine, and dead on 13 August 1878 in Dorset, Vermont, belonged to that important company of nineteenth-century American women whose literary influence was felt most deeply in homes, churches, and private devotional reading rather than in the official institutions of literary prestige. She was a poet, hymn writer, novelist, teacher, minister’s w…

“We make the most of it as long as we must stay in it; but the under-current bears home.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886 (~56)
185 live poems · English

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…

“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing

In time

Elizabeth Prentiss
Emily Dickinson
1818 1886
They overlapped for 49 years (1830–1878). When Emily Dickinson was born, Elizabeth Prentiss was about 12. Emily Dickinson was about 48 when Elizabeth Prentiss died.

On the map

About 233 km separate Portland, Maine, USA from Amherst, Massachusetts, 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

religious domestic

Elizabeth Prentiss: portland, maine, dorset, vermont, more love to thee, o christ, stepping heavenward, george lewis prentiss, edward payson, second congregational church, evangelical fiction. Emily Dickinson: amherst, massachusetts, edward dickinson, susan gilbert, because i could not stop for death, fascicles, mount holyoke female seminary, civil war.

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.

Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
80% self, life
Compare
If I can stop one heart from breaking
Emily Dickinson
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
79%
Compare
In Vain
Emily Dickinson
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
79% suffering
Compare
If I can stop one heart from breaking
Emily Dickinson
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
78%
Compare
Joy in Death
Emily Dickinson
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
77% life
Compare
In Vain
Emily Dickinson
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
77% spiritual, life
Compare
Psalm of the Day
Emily Dickinson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Prentiss: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness. Emily Dickinson: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

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