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

Alice Corbin Alice Corbin

Poet B

Alice Meynell Alice Meynell
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 77% Poems 88% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alice Corbin

Alice Corbin

16 April 1881 – 18 July 1949 (~68)
7 live poems · English

Alice Corbin Henderson, born Alice Corbin on 16 April 1881 in St. Louis, Missouri, and dead on 18 July 1949 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, occupies an important if still insufficiently celebrated place in American literary history. She was a poet of lyrical concentration, an editor whose judgment helped define a revolutionary period in verse, a critic attentive to the relation between art and place, and a cultural organize…

“Indian symbolism, with the image as employed by the Indian, is to my mind the most fruitful and translatable contribution that Indian poetry can make to our own.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell

11 October 1847 – 27 November 1922 (~75)
3 live poems · English

Alice Meynell, born Alice Christiana Gertrude Thompson on 11 October 1847 and dead on 27 November 1922, was one of the most distinctive English writers to work across the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. A poet of exquisite compression, an essayist of alert and sensuous intelligence, a critic, editor, Catholic public intellectual, and campaigner for women’s suffrage, she made a literary identity that cannot be r…

“There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple-leaves with an early moon.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Edwardian Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Alice Corbin
Alice Meynell
1847 1949
They overlapped for 42 years (1881–1922). When Alice Corbin was born, Alice Meynell was about 34. Alice Corbin was about 41 when Alice Meynell died.
Alice Corbin in history Alice Meynell in history Years they were given

On the map

About 6,753 km separate St. Louis, Missouri, USA from Barnes, London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Alice Corbin

Alice Meynell

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

love self

Alice Corbin only

world moon nature lover water stone plea sliding henderson chicago desire shadows

Alice Meynell only

thrush bird listener sound gardens garden heart birds beloved silence life music

From the biographies

Alice Corbin: st. louis, santa fe, william penhallow henderson, poetry magazine, the spinning woman of the desert, red earth: poems of new mexico, imagism, chicago modernism. Alice Meynell: edwardian, wilfrid meynell, preludes, renouncement, catholicism, francis thompson, the colour of life, the lady poverty.

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.

Love Me at Last
Alice Corbin
78% love, self
Compare
My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell
The Lyre
Alice Corbin
78% music
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
The Lyre
Alice Corbin
77%
Compare
A Thrush Before Dawn
Alice Meynell
Love Me at Last
Alice Corbin
75% love
Compare
To the Beloved
Alice Meynell
America
Alice Corbin
74%
Compare
My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell
The Star
Alice Corbin
73%
Compare
My heart shall be thy garden
Alice Meynell

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

Alice Corbin

1889 Relocation to Chicago
1900 Education at the University of Chicago
1912 First Publication in Poetry Magazine
1913 Co-Editor of Poetry Magazine
1917 Marriage to John Corbin
1920 Involvement in the Santa Fe Art Colony
1923 Publication of 'The New Poetry'
1948 Publication of 'The Poet's Companion'

Alice Meynell

1868 Alice Meynell's First Published Work
1872 Alice Meynell's Conversion to Roman Catholicism
1877 Marriage to Wilfrid Meynell
1890 Publication of 'The Rhythm of Life'
1897 Alice Meynell's Involvement in the Women's Suffrage Movement
1903 Publication of 'The Poems of Alice Meynell'
1915 Death of Alice Meynell's Husband
1921 Publication of 'Last Poems'

Emotional landscapes

Alice Corbin: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness. Alice Meynell: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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