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

Stephen Collins Foster Stephen Collins Foster

Poet B

Sidney Lanier Sidney Lanier
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 65% Blended 65%
Swap sides Another related pair
Stephen Collins Foster

Stephen Collins Foster

4 July 1826 – 13 January 1864 (~38)
1 live poem · English

On a steamy July day in 1864, a man stumbled and fell in his dingy room at the North American Hotel on the Bowery in New York City. When help finally arrived, Stephen Collins Foster lay bleeding, having struck his head on a washbasin. In his pockets, rescuers found a purse containing thirty-eight cents and a scrap of paper bearing the words "dear friends and gentle hearts." Three days later, on January 13, 1864, Fost…

“I have done a great deal to build up a taste for the Ethiopian songs among refined people by making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier

3 February 1842 – 7 September 1881 (~39)
1 live poem · English

In the pantheon of American poets, Sidney Lanier occupies a singular position—a musician who wielded verse with the same technical mastery he brought to his flute, a Southern gentleman who sought to reconcile the fractured soul of his native region with the progressive ideals of a nation transformed by war. Born on February 3, 1842, in Macon, Georgia, and dying tragically young on September 7, 1881, in Lynn, North Ca…

“Music is love in search of a voice.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Love Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Poet-Musicians, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Sorrow, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Stephen Collins Foster
Sidney Lanier
1826 1881
They overlapped for 23 years (1842–1864). When Sidney Lanier was born, Stephen Collins Foster was about 16. Sidney Lanier was about 22 when Stephen Collins Foster died.
Stephen Collins Foster in history Sidney Lanier in history Years they were given

On the map

About 905 km separate Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA from Macon, Georgia, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Stephen Collins Foster

Sidney Lanier

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

life

Stephen Collins Foster only

dreamer presence world beauty dream

Sidney Lanier only

suffering darkness fret dark pain chill thorn

From the biographies

music

Stephen Collins Foster: lawrenceville pennsylvania, oh! susanna, my old kentucky home, old folks at home, camptown races, blackface minstrelsy, bellevue hospital, jane denny mcdowell. Sidney Lanier: macon, georgia, lynn, north carolina, robert sampson lanier, mary jane anderson, civil war, confederate cause, point lookout, maryland, tuberculosis.

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.

Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster
70% life
Compare
Opposition
Sidney Lanier

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1842 First Pale Lager Brewed in Pilsen
1845 Great Famine in Ireland (1845)
1845 The Outbreak of the Irish Potato Famine
1845 Thoreau's Walden Experiment Begins
1846 Publication of Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
1846 Thoreau's Arrest for Civil Disobedience
1847 Publication of Agnes Grey
1848 Publication of The Biglow Papers

Stephen Collins Foster

1834 Early Musical Influences on Foster
1844 Education at Jefferson College
1846 First Published Song
1850 Marriage to Jane D. McDowell
1850 Publication of 'Camptown Races'
1851 Publication of 'Swanee River'
1853 Relocation to New York City
1855 Friendship with George F. Root

Sidney Lanier

1860 Graduation from Oglethorpe College
1867 Marriage to Mary Day
1869 Relocation to Baltimore
1876 Health struggles and tuberculosis diagnosis
1878 Publication of 'Tiger-Lilies'
1879 Appointment as a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University
1880 Publication of 'The Boy's King Arthur'
1880 Publication of 'The Science of English Verse'

Emotional landscapes

Stephen Collins Foster: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder. Sidney Lanier: Tenderness, Sorrow, Spirituality.

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