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

Achsa White Sprague Achsa White Sprague

Poet B

Hildegard of Bingen Hildegard of Bingen
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 64% Blended 64%
Swap sides Another related pair
Achsa White Sprague

Achsa White Sprague

17 November 1827 – 6 July 1862 (~35)
1 live poem · English

Achsa White Sprague was born on 17 November 1827 in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, a small mountain community whose austere beauty and close social fabric helped form her imagination. She died there on 6 July 1862, only thirty-four years old by the modern method of counting age, though many nineteenth-century notices described her as being in her thirty-fifth year. In the short interval between those dates, Sprague became…

“I am not afraid to die, for death to me is but the threshold of a higher, purer, and more glorious life.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen

c. 1098 – 17 September 1179 (~81)
1 live poem · Latin

Hildegard of Bingen, born around 1098 and dead on 17 September 1179, was among the most astonishingly various voices of the twelfth century: abbess, visionary, theological writer, poet, composer, correspondent, preacher, administrator, and observer of the natural world. To call her simply a “medieval mystic,” though true as far as it goes, is to make her smaller than she was. Her life unfolded within the institutions…

“Every element has a sound, a voice, a spirit, and a life.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Medieval Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Achsa White Sprague
Hildegard of Bingen
1098 1862
Their lives did not overlap. 648 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
Achsa White Sprague in history Hildegard of Bingen in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,918 km separate Plymouth Notch, Vermont, USA from Bermersheim, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Achsa White Sprague

Hildegard of Bingen

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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Achsa White Sprague only

death warrior blood body victory sword helmet dying command

Hildegard of Bingen only

hildegard christ divine hymn incarnation power adam eternitatis eternity nature pain

From the biographies

women authority religious

Achsa White Sprague: plymouth notch, vermont, spiritualism, trance lecturer, rheumatic illness, calvin coolidge, antislavery, women's rights. Hildegard of Bingen: bermersheim, rhineland, scivias, symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum, jutta of sponheim, volmar, richardis of stade, abbess.

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 Dying Warrior
Achsa White Sprague
62%
Compare
O vis eternitatis
Hildegard of Bingen

The world around them

Achsa White Sprague

1835 Education and Early Influences of Achsa White Sprague
1852 First Major Publication of Poetry
1853 Involvement in Spiritualism
1855 Lecturing on Women's Rights
1856 Publication of 'The Spirit World'
1858 Health Crisis and Reflection
1861 Participation in Spiritualist Conventions
1863 Posthumous Recognition and Legacy

Hildegard of Bingen

1106 Hildegard of Bingen's Education Begins
1136 Hildegard of Bingen Becomes Magistra
1141 Divine Command to Record Visions
1151 Hildegard of Bingen's First Major Work, Scivias
1158 Hildegard of Bingen's Move to Rupertsberg
1160 Hildegard of Bingen's Musical Compositions
1170 Hildegard of Bingen's Vision of the Church
1179 Hildegard of Bingen's Final Years and Legacy

Emotional landscapes

Achsa White Sprague: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Hildegard of Bingen: Spirituality, Wonder, Tenderness.

Skip to main content