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

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

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 78% Poems 84% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

14 September 1883 – 22 April 1922 (~39)
2 live poems · English

Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall was born on 14 September 1883 at Gunnersbury, then in Middlesex, England, and died on 22 April 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia. During her lifetime she was among the best-known and most admired poets in Canada, a writer whose delicately fashioned lyrics, religious imagination, and exact attention to the natural world won readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Her posthumous reput…

“I cannot give up my work. It is quite impossible to do so, and I have never yet met the man who will consent to my keeping on with it after marriage.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Nature Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Tenderness, Wonder
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…

“Throughout the winter, nature's active and crescent principle seems never held wholly in abeyance.”

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

In time

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall
Edith M. Thomas
1854 1925
They overlapped for 40 years (1883–1922). When Marjorie L. C. Pickthall was born, Edith M. Thomas was about 29. Edith M. Thomas was about 68 when Marjorie L. C. Pickthall died.
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall in history Edith M. Thomas in history Years they were given

On the map

About 6,148 km separate Gunnersbury, Middlesex, England from Chatham, Ohio, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

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

life beauty

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall only

sorrow green loss innocence nuts falling love leaves butterflies witch tower birds

Edith M. Thomas only

garden purpose vobis admiration unfulfilled creation heart flowers dahlias voice

From the biographies

women

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall: gunnersbury, vancouver, two ears of corn, the drift of pinions, charles g. d. roberts, canadian poets, victorian aestheticism, catholic church. 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.

I Sat Among the Green Leaves
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall
79%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
I Sat Among the Green Leaves
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall
79% life
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
The Sea Witch
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall
71% beauty, life, flowers
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
The Sea Witch
Marjorie L. C. Pickthall
67% beauty
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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
1885 Premiere of 'The Mikado'
1886 Discovery of Gold on the Witwatersrand Sparks Johannesburg Boom

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall

1889 Family Relocation to Canada
1898 First Publication of Children's Stories
1904 Publication of 'Two Ears of Corn'
1910 Publication of 'The Silver Maple'
1911 Move to British Columbia
1913 Publication of 'The Wishing Tree'
1917 Publication of 'The House of All Sorts'
1919 Recognition by the Canadian Authors Association

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

Marjorie L. C. Pickthall: Peace, Tenderness, Wonder. Edith M. Thomas: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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