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

Lydia Huntley Sigourney Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Poet B

Elizabeth Prentiss Elizabeth Prentiss
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 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Lydia Huntley Sigourney

Lydia Huntley Sigourney

1 September 1791 – 10 June 1865 (~74)
2 live poems · English

Lydia Huntley Sigourney, born Lydia Howard Huntley on 1 September 1791 in Norwich, Connecticut, became one of the most widely read, industrious, and culturally influential American writers of the nineteenth century. During the height of her career, her poems were printed in newspapers and magazines, memorized by schoolchildren, recited at funerals, quoted from pulpits, and displayed in family albums. She wrote for re…

“My mind was made up never to leave my parents. I felt that their absorbing love could never be repaid by the longest life-service.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Romantic Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality
Elizabeth Prentiss

Elizabeth Prentiss

26 October 1818 – 13 August 1878 (~60)
3 live poems · English

Elizabeth Prentiss, born Elizabeth Payson on 26 October 1818 in Portland, Maine, and dead on 13 August 1878 in Dorset, Vermont, belonged to that important company of nineteenth-century American women whose literary influence was felt most deeply in homes, churches, and private devotional reading rather than in the official institutions of literary prestige. She was a poet, hymn writer, novelist, teacher, minister’s w…

“It is the struggle to be patient and gentle and cheerful, when pressed down and worn upon and distracted, that costs us so much.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness

In time

Lydia Huntley Sigourney
Elizabeth Prentiss
1791 1878
They overlapped for 48 years (1818–1865). When Elizabeth Prentiss was born, Lydia Huntley Sigourney was about 27. Elizabeth Prentiss was about 47 when Lydia Huntley Sigourney died.

On the map

About 280 km separate Norwich, Connecticut, USA from Portland, Maine, 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

women domestic religious

Lydia Huntley Sigourney: norwich, connecticut, sweet singer of hartford, moral pieces, traits of the aborigines of america, indian names, charles sigourney, daniel wadsworth. Elizabeth Prentiss: portland, maine, dorset, vermont, more love to thee, o christ, stepping heavenward, george lewis prentiss, edward payson, second congregational church, evangelical fiction.

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.

Death of an Infant
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
77%
Compare
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Elizabeth Prentiss
Christian Settlements in Africa
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
75%
Compare
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
Death of an Infant
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
74%
Compare
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
Christian Settlements in Africa
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
73% suffering
Compare
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
Death of an Infant
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
70% life
Compare
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
Christian Settlements in Africa
Lydia Huntley Sigourney
69% stars
Compare
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Elizabeth Prentiss

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Lydia Huntley Sigourney: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality. Elizabeth Prentiss: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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