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

Anne Whitney Anne Whitney

Poet B

E. Nesbit E. Nesbit
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 50% Poems 85% Blended 66%
Swap sides Another related pair
Anne Whitney

Anne Whitney

2 September 1821 – 23 January 1915 (~94)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of 19th-century American artists, few figures embody the spirit of creative rebellion and social conscience as powerfully as Anne Whitney. Born into an era when women were expected to confine their artistic pursuits to watercolors and embroidery, Whitney defied convention to become one of America's most accomplished sculptors and a significant voice in poetry. Her ninety-four years spanned a transform…

“The vast difference between working here and at home is at once manifest in the abundance with which the necessities of study present themselves to you without any wearisome search.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Spirituality, Irony
Listen Timeline Affinities
E. Nesbit

E. Nesbit

15 August 1858 – 4 May 1924 (~66)
4 live poems · English

Edith Nesbit, who published most often as E. Nesbit, was born on 15 August 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane in Kennington, then part of Surrey and now within south London. She died on 4 May 1924 at New Romney, Kent. In the years between those dates she became one of the most inventive writers for children in English, an accomplished poet, a novelist of adult life, a writer of ghost stories and social comedy, a social…

“But there must be love and trust: without that all education outside book-learning is for ever impossible.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Anne Whitney
E. Nesbit
1821 1924
They overlapped for 58 years (1858–1915). When E. Nesbit was born, Anne Whitney was about 37. E. Nesbit was about 57 when Anne Whitney died.
Anne Whitney in history E. Nesbit in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,279 km separate Watertown, Massachusetts, USA from Kennington, Surrey, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Anne Whitney

E. Nesbit

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 flower suffering

Anne Whitney only

life grave digger burial laughter mortality social dreaming awake dream pain divine

E. Nesbit only

love desire world beloved woman devotion wife ages passion romantic hour gods

From the biographies

social

Anne Whitney: watertown, massachusetts, james monroe, civil war, abolition, women's rights, the lone parting, equinoxial, ethiopia. E. Nesbit: kennington, new romney, hubert bland, the railway children, five children and it, the story of the treasure seekers, fabian society, songs of love and empire.

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.

Half Awake
Anne Whitney
77% life
Compare
The Monk
E. Nesbit
The Passion Flower
Anne Whitney
76% spiritual, religious
Compare
The Monk
E. Nesbit
The Passion Flower
Anne Whitney
75% suffering, love
Compare
Love's Suicide
E. Nesbit
The Passion Flower
Anne Whitney
74% flower, love
Compare
Love Well the Hour
E. Nesbit
Half Awake
Anne Whitney
73%
Compare
Love's Suicide
E. Nesbit
The Passion Flower
Anne Whitney
72% love
Compare
The Wife of All Ages
E. Nesbit

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1858 Publication of 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'
1858 Publication of Ionica
1859 Discovery of Oil at Drake Well Sparks Pennsylvania Petroleum Boom
1859 First Commercial Oil Well Drilled in Titusville
1859 Publication of 'Adam Bede'
1859 The Carrington Event Aurora
1860 Abraham Lincoln Elected President
1860 Publication of 'Eternal Father, Strong to Save'

Anne Whitney

1837 Education at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary
1850 Move to Boston
1854 Publication of 'Poems' Collection
1869 Involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement
1880 Creation of the Statue of Samuel Adams
1885 Travel to Europe for Artistic Inspiration
1890 Publication of 'The Poems of Anne Whitney'
1915 Death of Anne Whitney

E. Nesbit

1862 Nesbit Family Moves to France
1880 Marriage to Hubert Bland
1884 Founding of the Fabian Society
1899 Publication of 'The Story of the Treasure Seekers'
1903 Involvement in the Women's Social and Political Union
1906 Publication of 'The Railway Children'
1914 Death of Hubert Bland
1922 Publication of 'The Lark' and Other Poems

Emotional landscapes

Anne Whitney: Sorrow, Spirituality, Irony. E. Nesbit: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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