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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Poet B

Eugene Field Eugene Field
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 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882 (~75)
69 live poems · English

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on 27 February 1807 in Portland, Maine, then a bustling coastal town in Massachusetts, and died on 24 March 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his lifetime he became, by a considerable margin, the most famous American poet of the nineteenth century. His verses were memorized in schools, recited in parlors, printed in newspapers, sung, parodied, and carried across the Atlantic…

“The heart, like the mind, has a memory. And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes of the past.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder
Eugene Field

Eugene Field

2 September 1850 – 4 November 1895 (~45)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American literature, few figures occupy such a unique and enduring position as Eugene Field, the beloved "Children's Poet" whose gentle verses about childhood, dreams, and imagination have captivated readers for over a century. Born into the rough-and-tumble world of frontier America and dying at the height of the Gilded Age, Field's life spanned a transformative period in American history, yet his…

“The desire is one that gives me no peace, and I see no other way to its fulfilment than through the liberality of any friend, or friends, with money to lend.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Wonder

In time

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Eugene Field
1807 1895
They overlapped for 33 years (1850–1882). When Eugene Field was born, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was about 43. Eugene Field was about 32 when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died.

On the map

About 1,755 km separate Portland, Maine, USA from St. Louis, Missouri, 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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: portland maine, bowdoin college, nathaniel hawthorne, frances appleton, paul revere’s ride, the village blacksmith, the song of hiawatha, outre-mer. Eugene Field: st. louis, gilded age, roswell field, frances reed field, mary field french, williams college, knox college, st. joseph gazette.

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 Children's Hour
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
76% love, father, world
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
The Golden Mile-Stone
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
73% world
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
The Village Blacksmith
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
73%
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
The Sound of the Sea
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
72%
Compare
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Eugene Field
The Children's Hour
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
72% children
Compare
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Eugene Field
Weariness
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
72%
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder. Eugene Field: Tenderness, Joy, Wonder.

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