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

Henry Timrod Henry Timrod

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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 59% Blended 59%
Swap sides Another related pair
Henry Timrod

Henry Timrod

8 December 1828 – 7 October 1867 (~39)
1 live poem · English

Born on December 8, 1828, in Charleston, South Carolina, Henry Timrod was a poet whose verse would come to embody the soul of a region in anguish — the American South during and after the Civil War. Though he lived only thirty-nine years, his life was a tapestry woven with threads of profound beauty, relentless hardship, and unyielding devotion to art. A man of delicate health, financial instability, and deep emotion…

“So this is Death! how strange! were I a metaphysician I would analyze it; but as it is, I can only watch.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
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…

“Much of my experience of life has cost me a great price, and I want to use it for the strengthening and comforting of other souls.”

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

In time

Henry Timrod
Elizabeth Prentiss
1818 1878
They overlapped for 40 years (1828–1867). When Henry Timrod was born, Elizabeth Prentiss was about 10. Elizabeth Prentiss was about 49 when Henry Timrod died.
Henry Timrod in history Elizabeth Prentiss in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,473 km separate Charleston, South Carolina, USA from Portland, Maine, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Henry Timrod

Elizabeth Prentiss

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.

Henry Timrod only

grief sorrow love dies dead mourning presence memory

Elizabeth Prentiss only

spiritual sleep sheep stars world moon father baby savior self healing soul

From the biographies

Henry Timrod: charleston, south carolina, the dying child, ode: sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the confederate dead, ethnogenesis, poet laureate of the confederacy, tuberculosis, william timrod. 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.

Grief dies like joy
Henry Timrod
75% sorrow
Compare
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
Grief dies like joy
Henry Timrod
73%
Compare
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
Grief dies like joy
Henry Timrod
64%
Compare
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Elizabeth Prentiss

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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'
1833 The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire
1834 Publication of 'Philip van Artevelde'
1836 Publication of 'Nature'

Henry Timrod

1838 Early Education at Charleston Academy
1847 Enrollment at the University of South Carolina
1856 Marriage to Mary E. Timrod
1860 Publication of 'The Cotton States and Other Poems'
1861 Appointment as Poet Laureate of the Confederacy
1864 Publication of 'Poems of Henry Timrod'
1867 Posthumous Recognition and Legacy

Elizabeth Prentiss

1827 Death of Edward Payson, Elizabeth's Father
1845 Marriage to George L. Prentiss
1858 Publication of 'The Life of Trust'
1869 Publication of 'Stepping Heavenward'
1871 Death of Elizabeth's Mother
1876 Publication of 'Hymns and Sacred Poems'
1888 Death of Elizabeth's Husband
1898 Final Years and Legacy

Emotional landscapes

Henry Timrod: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality. Elizabeth Prentiss: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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