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

Lydia Huntley Sigourney Lydia Huntley Sigourney
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 75% Poems 85% 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…

“It seems to me that the sound of my six little feet is the very pleasantest sound in the world.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Lydia Huntley Sigourney

1 September 1791 – 10 June 1865 (~74)
2 live poems · English

Lydia Huntley Sigourney, born Lydia Howard Huntley on 1 September 1791 in Norwich, Connecticut, became one of the most widely read, industrious, and culturally influential American writers of the nineteenth century. During the height of her career, her poems were printed in newspapers and magazines, memorized by schoolchildren, recited at funerals, quoted from pulpits, and displayed in family albums. She wrote for re…

“The Sabbath is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality

In time

Elizabeth Prentiss
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
1791 1878
They overlapped for 48 years (1818–1865). When Elizabeth Prentiss was born, Lydia Huntley Sigourney was about 27. Elizabeth Prentiss was about 47 when Lydia Huntley Sigourney died.

On the map

About 280 km separate Portland, Maine, USA from Norwich, Connecticut, 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 women

Elizabeth Prentiss: portland, maine, dorset, vermont, more love to thee, o christ, stepping heavenward, george lewis prentiss, edward payson, second congregational church, evangelical fiction. Lydia Huntley Sigourney: norwich, connecticut, sweet singer of hartford, moral pieces, traits of the aborigines of america, indian names, charles sigourney, daniel wadsworth.

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.

Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Elizabeth Prentiss
77%
Compare
Death of an Infant
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
75%
Compare
Christian Settlements in Africa
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
74%
Compare
Death of an Infant
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
73% suffering
Compare
Christian Settlements in Africa
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
70% life
Compare
Death of an Infant
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Elizabeth Prentiss
69% stars
Compare
Christian Settlements in Africa
Lydia Huntley Sigourney

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Prentiss: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness. Lydia Huntley Sigourney: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality.

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