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.

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

Amy Lowell Amy Lowell

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 75% Poems 87% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell

9 February 1874 – 12 May 1925 (~51)
8 live poems · English

Amy Lawrence Lowell emerged from the staid drawing rooms of Boston's Brahmin society to become one of the most controversial and influential poets of early twentieth-century America. Born on February 9, 1874, into one of New England's most distinguished families, she would spend her fifty-one years challenging literary conventions, championing new poetic forms, and leaving an indelible mark on American literature. He…

“The true test of poetry is sincerity and vitality. It is not rhyme, or metre, or subject.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Imagist Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder
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…

“My birthdays are the most melancholy days I know.”

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

In time

Amy Lowell
Edith M. Thomas
1854 1925
They overlapped for 52 years (1874–1925). When Amy Lowell was born, Edith M. Thomas was about 20.

On the map

About 983 km separate Boston, Massachusetts, USA from Chatham, Ohio, USA. Shared ground: United States.

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

From the biographies

Amy Lowell: boston, imagist movement, ada dwyer russell, sword blades and poppy seed, patterns, the taxi, can grande's castle, tendencies in modern american poetry. 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.

Music
Amy Lowell
79% beauty
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
Little Ivory Figures Pulled with String
Amy Lowell
76% beauty
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
Stupidity
Amy Lowell
76%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
A Petition
Amy Lowell
76%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
A Blockhead
Amy Lowell
75% life
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
Little Ivory Figures Pulled with String
Amy Lowell
74% heart, 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.

Emotional landscapes

Amy Lowell: Longing, Tenderness, Wonder. Edith M. Thomas: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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