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

Achsa White Sprague Achsa White Sprague

Poet B

Dorothy Greenwell Dorothy Greenwell
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 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
Achsa White Sprague

Achsa White Sprague

17 November 1827 – 6 July 1862 (~35)
1 live poem · English

Achsa White Sprague was born on 17 November 1827 in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, a small mountain community whose austere beauty and close social fabric helped form her imagination. She died there on 6 July 1862, only thirty-four years old by the modern method of counting age, though many nineteenth-century notices described her as being in her thirty-fifth year. In the short interval between those dates, Sprague became…

“I have no desire to live merely for the sake of living, but I do desire to live to do good, to be useful to my fellow beings.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Dorothy Greenwell

Dorothy Greenwell

6 December 1821 – 29 March 1882 (~61)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Victorian literature, where names like Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold dominate the landscape, the voice of Dorothy "Dora" Greenwell emerges as both distinctive and revelatory. Born into the rolling hills of County Durham on December 6, 1821, and departing this world on March 29, 1882, in Clifton near Bristol, Greenwell crafted a literary legacy that bridged the sacred and secular, the personal and…

“I was born beneath quiet hills, among green pastures, beside still waters. My first companion was a little stream, my earliest counsellor an ancient Book.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Achsa White Sprague
Dorothy Greenwell
1821 1882
They overlapped for 36 years (1827–1862). When Achsa White Sprague was born, Dorothy Greenwell was about 6. Dorothy Greenwell was about 41 when Achsa White Sprague died.
Achsa White Sprague in history Dorothy Greenwell in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,084 km separate Plymouth Notch, Vermont, USA from Greenwell Ford, Lanchester, County Durham, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Achsa White Sprague

Dorothy Greenwell

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

Achsa White Sprague only

warrior blood body victory sword helmet dying command

Dorothy Greenwell only

life divine soul love faith hope earthly grief christ savior devotional religious

From the biographies

women's rights women religious

Achsa White Sprague: plymouth notch, vermont, spiritualism, trance lecturer, rheumatic illness, calvin coolidge, antislavery, women's rights. Dorothy Greenwell: county durham, greenwell ford, the patience of hope, songs of salvation, henry wadsworth longfellow, victorian literature, anglican faith, women's rights.

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 Dying Warrior
Achsa White Sprague
76% death
Compare
The Soul's Parting
Dorothy Greenwell
The Dying Warrior
Achsa White Sprague
73% death
Compare
I Am Not Skilled to Understand
Dorothy Greenwell

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'

Achsa White Sprague

1835 Education and Early Influences of Achsa White Sprague
1852 First Major Publication of Poetry
1853 Involvement in Spiritualism
1855 Lecturing on Women's Rights
1856 Publication of 'The Spirit World'
1858 Health Crisis and Reflection
1861 Participation in Spiritualist Conventions
1863 Posthumous Recognition and Legacy

Dorothy Greenwell

1840 Financial Decline of the Greenwell Family
1850 Publication of First Poem
1853 Move to London
1854 Friendship with Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1864 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Dorothy Greenwell'
1865 Involvement in Religious Societies
1870 Publication of 'The Lost Chord'
1883 Posthumous Recognition

Emotional landscapes

Achsa White Sprague: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Dorothy Greenwell: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

Skip to main content