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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Stephen Collins Foster Stephen Collins Foster

Poet B

Philip Freneau Philip Freneau
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 66% Blended 66%
Swap sides Another related pair
Stephen Collins Foster

Stephen Collins Foster

4 July 1826 – 13 January 1864 (~38)
1 live poem · English

On a steamy July day in 1864, a man stumbled and fell in his dingy room at the North American Hotel on the Bowery in New York City. When help finally arrived, Stephen Collins Foster lay bleeding, having struck his head on a washbasin. In his pockets, rescuers found a purse containing thirty-eight cents and a scrap of paper bearing the words "dear friends and gentle hearts." Three days later, on January 13, 1864, Fost…

“I have done a great deal to build up a taste for the Ethiopian songs among refined people by making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
Philip Freneau

Philip Freneau

2 January 1752 – 18 December 1832 (~80)
1 live poem · English

Philip Morin Freneau was born on 2 January 1752 in New York City and died on 18 December 1832 near his home in Monmouth County, New Jersey. During his long and restless life, he became a poet, sailor, merchant, editor, polemicist, farmer, husband, father, and partisan journalist. He has often been called the “Poet of the American Revolution,” a useful but incomplete title. Freneau did give memorable literary shape to…

“This is the last time I shall enter into such a business; it worries me to death and by no means suits my giddy, wandring brain.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Augustan Poets, Colonial American Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Stephen Collins Foster
Philip Freneau
1752 1864
They overlapped for 7 years (1826–1832). When Stephen Collins Foster was born, Philip Freneau was about 74. Stephen Collins Foster was about 6 when Philip Freneau died.
Stephen Collins Foster in history Philip Freneau in history Years they were given

On the map

About 507 km separate Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA from New York City, New York, USA. Both have ground in New York City and New York.

Stephen Collins Foster

Philip Freneau

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

life beauty

Stephen Collins Foster only

dreamer presence world dream

Philip Freneau only

flower nature death wild

From the biographies

Stephen Collins Foster: lawrenceville pennsylvania, oh! susanna, my old kentucky home, old folks at home, camptown races, blackface minstrelsy, bellevue hospital, jane denny mcdowell. Philip Freneau: new york city, monmouth county, the rising glory of america, james madison, hugh henry brackenridge, the wild honey suckle, the indian burying ground, the british prison ship.

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.

Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster
75% life, beauty
Compare
The Wild Honey Suckle
Philip Freneau

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1826 Death of Charlotte Scott
1826 First Permanent Camera Photograph Is Made
1827 Publication of 'The Christian Year'
1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction in London
1831 HMS Beagle Begins Darwin's Survey Voyage
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction
1831 Publication of 'Canti'

Stephen Collins Foster

1834 Early Musical Influences on Foster
1844 Education at Jefferson College
1846 First Published Song
1850 Marriage to Jane D. McDowell
1850 Publication of 'Camptown Races'
1851 Publication of 'Swanee River'
1853 Relocation to New York City
1855 Friendship with George F. Root

Philip Freneau

1771 Enrollment at Princeton University
1772 Publication of 'The Rising Glory of America'
1780 Capture by the British
1781 Publication of 'The British Prison Ship'
1786 Publication of 'The Wild Honey Suckle'
1791 Establishment of the National Gazette
1792 Conflict with Alexander Hamilton
1795 Move to Mount Pleasant, New Jersey

Emotional landscapes

Stephen Collins Foster: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder. Philip Freneau: Tenderness, Sorrow, Despair.

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