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

Frances E. W. Harper Frances E. W. Harper

Poet B

Anne Spencer Anne Spencer
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 79% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Frances E. W. Harper

Frances E. W. Harper

24 September 1825 – 22 February 1911 (~86)
4 live poems · English

In the rich tapestry of nineteenth-century American literature and reform, few figures shine as brightly—or with as enduring a flame—as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Born into freedom yet forged in the fires of racial injustice, she emerged as a poet of profound moral vision, a tireless abolitionist lecturer, a pioneering novelist, and a champion of women’s rights, temperance, and Black uplift. Her life spanned the a…

“We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving the curse in its own soul.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Anne Spencer

Anne Spencer

6 February 1882 – 27 July 1975 (~93)
3 live poems · English

Anne Spencer was a poet whose verses captured the quiet fire of resilience, the lush beauty of the natural world, and the sharp edges of racial and gender injustice in early twentieth-century America. Born in the rolling farmlands of Virginia at a time when the shadow of slavery still lingered over Black lives, she forged a literary legacy that transcended her geographic isolation from the bustling heart of the Harle…

“I write about some of the things I love. But have no civilized articulation for the things I hate.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Social Justice Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Frances E. W. Harper
Anne Spencer
1825 1975
They overlapped for 30 years (1882–1911). When Anne Spencer was born, Frances E. W. Harper was about 57. Anne Spencer was about 29 when Frances E. W. Harper died.
Frances E. W. Harper in history Anne Spencer in history Years they were given

On the map

About 411 km separate Baltimore, Maryland, USA from Henry County, Virginia, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Frances E. W. Harper

Anne Spencer

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

heart

Frances E. W. Harper only

slavery free mother slave abolitionist religious authority truth christian biblical bible scripture

Anne Spencer only

life world woman love wife harlem stars silence friend travelers prayer harmony

From the biographies

african

Frances E. W. Harper: baltimore, maryland, frederick douglass, the slave mother, poems on miscellaneous subjects, the elevation and education of our people, fenton harper, sketches of southern life, moses: a story of the nile. Anne Spencer: lynchburg, danville, edward alexander spencer, the crisis, before the feast of shushan, white things, lady lady, the wife-woman.

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 Slave Mother
Frances E. W. Harper
78% heart
Compare
The Wife-Woman
Anne Spencer
Bible Defence of Slavery
Frances E. W. Harper
69%
Compare
The Wife-Woman
Anne Spencer
Free Labor
Frances E. W. Harper
68%
Compare
The Wife-Woman
Anne Spencer
The Little Builders
Frances E. W. Harper
67% love
Compare
The Wife-Woman
Anne Spencer
Bible Defence of Slavery
Frances E. W. Harper
67%
Compare
Requiem
Anne Spencer
The Slave Mother
Frances E. W. Harper
66% heart
Compare
Requiem
Anne Spencer

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine

Frances E. W. Harper

1828 Frances E. W. Harper's Orphanhood
1830 Education at Watkins Academy
1845 First Published Work
1872 Publication of 'Sketches of Southern Life'
1892 Publication of 'Iola; or, Shadows Uplifted'
1893 Involvement in the Suffrage Movement
1894 Publication of 'Complete Poems'
1896 Founding of the National Association of Colored Women

Anne Spencer

1901 Marriage to Edward Spencer
1910 Annie Bethel Scales Bannister's Name Change
1919 Involvement with the NAACP
1920 Publication of 'In the Garden'
1923 Publication of 'The Black Flower'
1923 Publication of 'The Cone' in 'The Crisis'
1926 Friendship with Langston Hughes
1940 Founding of the Lynchburg Chapter of the NAACP

Emotional landscapes

Frances E. W. Harper: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality. Anne Spencer: Spirituality, Sorrow, Longing.

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