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

Trumbull Stickney Trumbull Stickney
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 72% Poems 89% 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…

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
Trumbull Stickney

Trumbull Stickney

20 June 1874 – 11 October 1904 (~30)
2 live poems · English

Joseph Trumbull Stickney, known almost always as Trumbull Stickney, was born on 20 June 1874 in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in Boston on 11 October 1904. His brief life, ending when he was only thirty, has encouraged the familiar image of the doomed young poet whose promise exceeds his surviving achievement. That image is not wholly wrong, but it is too simple. Stickney was not merely a promising lyricist interrupt…

“You refer to the last thing excavated on classic soil, my own torso. It proves not to be an antique at all, but a work of a New England sculptor who was wrecked in a dory off the Peloponnesian Coast.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Trumbull Stickney
1807 1904
They overlapped for 9 years (1874–1882). When Trumbull Stickney was born, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was about 67. Trumbull Stickney was about 8 when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in history Trumbull Stickney in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,780 km separate Portland, Maine, USA from Geneva, Switzerland. Both have ground in Boston and Massachusetts.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Trumbull Stickney

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

world memory divine beauty

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow only

life nature death grief spiritual loss love suffering harvest voice history light

Trumbull Stickney only

hour presence past lake boatman heart vitality

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. Trumbull Stickney: geneva, boston, harvard college, william vaughn moody, george santayana, dramatic lyrics, greek tragedy, american school of classical studies.

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 Sound of the Sea
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
82% world
Compare
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney
To the River Charles
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
81% world, memory
Compare
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney
The Brook and the Wave
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
80% world
Compare
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney
The Fire of Driftwood
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
79% memory, past
Compare
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney
The Secret of the Sea
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
78%
Compare
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney
The Bridge
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
78% memory, world
Compare
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1874 Hardy Marries Emma Gifford in London
1874 Publication of 'Music and Moonlight'
1874 Publication of 'Romances sans paroles'
1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1821 Longfellow Enters Bowdoin College
1826 Longfellow's First European Sojourn
1831 Marriage to Mary Storer Potter
1835 Death of First Wife Mary Potter Longfellow
1836 Appointment to Harvard Professorship
1839 Publication of Voices of the Night
1843 Marriage to Frances 'Fanny' Appleton
1861 Death of Second Wife Fanny Appleton Longfellow

Trumbull Stickney

1886 Trumbull Stickney's Early Education
1891 Enrollment at Harvard University
1894 Publication of First Poems
1895 Friendship with William Vaughn Moody
1896 Graduation from Harvard University
1900 Publication of 'The Poems of Trumbull Stickney'
1901 Illness and Declining Health
1902 Final Years in Paris

Emotional landscapes

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder. Trumbull Stickney: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.

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