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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I 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

Elizabeth Stoddard Elizabeth Stoddard

Poet B

Edith M. Thomas Edith M. Thomas
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 73% Poems 89% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Elizabeth Stoddard

Elizabeth Stoddard

6 May 1823 – 1 August 1902 (~79)
2 live poems · English

On a spring day in 1823, in the small coastal village of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a child was born who would grow to become one of the most original and underappreciated voices in nineteenth-century American literature. Elizabeth Drew Barstow entered the world on May 6, in a town where the rhythms of the sea shaped daily existence and where salt spray and shipbuilding defined the community's character. The second…

“Alice, after I am gone take good care of Dick, and, for Heaven’s sake, go out and buy him a couple of new shirts.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Edith M. Thomas

Edith M. Thomas

12 August 1854 – 13 September 1925 (~71)
2 live poems · English

Edith Matilda Thomas was born on 12 August 1854 in Chatham, Ohio, and died on 13 September 1925 in New York City. During her lifetime she was admired as one of the most accomplished American lyric poets of the late nineteenth century, praised by editors, fellow writers, and readers for verse that joined close observation of nature to emotional reserve, formal intelligence, and a searching spiritual imagination. Yet s…

“I think I never was young.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Elizabeth Stoddard
Edith M. Thomas
1823 1925
They overlapped for 49 years (1854–1902). When Edith M. Thomas was born, Elizabeth Stoddard was about 31. Edith M. Thomas was about 48 when Elizabeth Stoddard died.
Elizabeth Stoddard in history Edith M. Thomas in history Years they were given

On the map

About 992 km separate Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, USA from Chatham, Ohio, USA. Both have ground in New York City and New York.

Elizabeth Stoddard

Edith M. Thomas

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

beauty life

Elizabeth Stoddard only

nature november autumn loss philosophical tradition landscape world birds death spring return

Edith M. Thomas only

garden purpose vobis admiration unfulfilled creation heart flowers dahlias voice

From the biographies

new york city women york

Elizabeth Stoddard: mattapoisett, new york city, richard henry stoddard, nathaniel hawthorne, the morgesons, two men, temple house, wheaton female seminary. Edith M. Thomas: chatham, ohio, new york city, helen hunt jackson, a new year's masque, the inverted torch, lyrics and sonnets, northeastern ohio, romantic poetry.

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.

A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
82% life
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
November
Elizabeth Stoddard
81% beauty
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
November
Elizabeth Stoddard
79% beauty
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
78%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1854 John Snow Traces the Broad Street Pump
1854 Publication of 'Walden'
1856 Invention of the Bessemer Process for Mass Steel Production
1856 Mauveine Synthetic Dye Invention
1856 Perkin's Accidental Discovery of Mauveine
1857 Pasteur Demonstrates the Biological Basis of Fermentation
1858 Publication of 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'
1858 Publication of Ionica

Elizabeth Stoddard

1841 Move to New York City
1850 Marriage to James H. Stoddard
1862 Publication of 'The Morgesons'
1865 Publication of 'Two Men'
1870 Move to San Francisco
1874 Publication of 'The Story of the Morgesons'
1886 Publication of 'The Old Woman'

Edith M. Thomas

1860 Early Education and Literary Influences of Edith M. Thomas
1872 Brief Attendance at Oberlin College
1885 First Major Publication in The Atlantic Monthly
1897 Publication of 'In the Green Mountains'
1900 Friendship with Poet Amy Lowell
1910 Publication of 'The Round Year'
1915 Involvement in Women's Literary Circles
1925 Final Years and Legacy

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Stoddard: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality. Edith M. Thomas: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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