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

Edmund Clarence Stedman Edmund Clarence Stedman

Poet B

Louis Untermeyer Louis Untermeyer
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 83% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Edmund Clarence Stedman

Edmund Clarence Stedman

8 October 1833 – 18 January 1908 (~75)
3 live poems · English

In the heart of nineteenth-century American letters stands a figure who defied easy categorization, a man who straddled two seemingly incompatible worlds with remarkable grace. Edmund Clarence Stedman, born on October 8, 1833, in Hartford, Connecticut, would become known as the "Bard of Wall Street," a sobriquet that captured both the paradox and the peculiar achievement of his life. For forty-five years, he navigate…

“Yes, there is a luck in most things, and in none more than in being born at the right time.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Louis Untermeyer

Louis Untermeyer

1 October 1885 – 18 December 1977 (~92)
3 live poems · English

In the sprawling landscape of twentieth-century American letters, few figures cast as long or as peculiar a shadow as Louis Untermeyer. Born on October 1, 1885, in New York City, and dying ninety-two years later on December 18, 1977, in Newtown, Connecticut, Untermeyer occupied a unique position in American cultural life. He was not primarily remembered as a great poet himself, though he published volumes of verse. H…

“The poet is not a man who says things, but one who makes things happen.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Edmund Clarence Stedman
Louis Untermeyer
1833 1977
They overlapped for 24 years (1885–1908). When Louis Untermeyer was born, Edmund Clarence Stedman was about 52. Louis Untermeyer was about 23 when Edmund Clarence Stedman died.
Edmund Clarence Stedman in history Louis Untermeyer in history Years they were given

On the map

About 161 km separate Hartford, Connecticut, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Both have ground in Connecticut and New York City and New York.

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Louis Untermeyer

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 world life

Edmund Clarence Stedman only

beloved love surf nature waves pearls power ocean intimate bridal lover lips

Louis Untermeyer only

beauty self miner caliban divine coal light stars darkness tree social pretty

From the biographies

new york city letters

Edmund Clarence Stedman: hartford, bard of wall street, elizabeth clementine stedman, new york city, the norwich tribune, how old brown took harper's ferry, pan in wall street, yale university. Louis Untermeyer: new york city, newtown, connecticut, modern american poetry, harriet monroe, ezra pound, t.s. eliot, carl sandburg, robert frost.

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 Sad Bridal
Edmund Clarence Stedman
73% death, life
Compare
Matter
Louis Untermeyer
The Sad Bridal
Edmund Clarence Stedman
71%
Compare
Implication
Louis Untermeyer
Custer
Edmund Clarence Stedman
70% death
Compare
Matter
Louis Untermeyer
Surf
Edmund Clarence Stedman
67%
Compare
Caliban in the Coal Mines
Louis Untermeyer
Surf
Edmund Clarence Stedman
66% world
Compare
Matter
Louis Untermeyer
Custer
Edmund Clarence Stedman
66%
Compare
Caliban in the Coal Mines
Louis Untermeyer

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Coca-Cola invented by John Pemberton in Atlanta
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia
1891 Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis

Edmund Clarence Stedman

1836 Relocation to Plainfield, New Jersey
1846 Education at Norwich Academy
1853 First Published Poem
1856 Marriage to Ellen Stedman
1860 Publication of 'Poems' Collection
1895 Publication of 'The Victorian Poets'
1900 Death of His Wife, Ellen
1905 Publication of 'The Poets of America'

Louis Untermeyer

1901 Early Education and Family Background of Louis Untermeyer
1911 First Poetry Collection Published
1917 Marriage to Jean Starr Untermeyer
1931 Publication of 'The Poetry of America'
1935 Involvement with the Federal Writers' Project
1938 Publication of 'The New American Poetry'
1941 Marriage to Anna Untermeyer
1956 Publication of 'The Collected Poems of Louis Untermeyer'

Emotional landscapes

Edmund Clarence Stedman: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing. Louis Untermeyer: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.

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