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

John Banister Tabb John Banister Tabb

Poet B

Trumbull Stickney Trumbull Stickney
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 70% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Banister Tabb

John Banister Tabb

22 March 1845 – 19 November 1909 (~64)
1 live poem · English

In the world of American poetry, few figures embody such remarkable contrasts as John Banister Tabb (March 22, 1845 – November 19, 1909), a man whose life journey carried him from the battlefields of the Confederacy to the quiet halls of a Catholic seminary, from the drawing rooms of Virginia aristocracy to a prison cell where poetry first awakened in his soul. Known affectionately as "Father Tabb" throughout his lat…

“I am not surprised that you, who are sojourning in a land where the cat was once worshiped, should desire to hear the mews (Muse) of the Tabb-y.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
Trumbull Stickney

Trumbull Stickney

20 June 1874 – 11 October 1904 (~30)
2 live poems · English

Joseph Trumbull Stickney, known almost always as Trumbull Stickney, was born on 20 June 1874 in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in Boston on 11 October 1904. His brief life, ending when he was only thirty, has encouraged the familiar image of the doomed young poet whose promise exceeds his surviving achievement. That image is not wholly wrong, but it is too simple. Stickney was not merely a promising lyricist interrupt…

“You refer to the last thing excavated on classic soil, my own torso. It proves not to be an antique at all, but a work of a New England sculptor who was wrecked in a dory off the Peloponnesian Coast.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Decadent Poets, Edwardian Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Banister Tabb
Trumbull Stickney
1845 1909
They overlapped for 31 years (1874–1904). When Trumbull Stickney was born, John Banister Tabb was about 29. John Banister Tabb was about 59 when Trumbull Stickney died.
John Banister Tabb in history Trumbull Stickney in history Years they were given

On the map

About 6,718 km separate Amelia County, Virginia, USA from Geneva, Switzerland. Shared ground: United States.

John Banister Tabb

Trumbull Stickney

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

world divine

John Banister Tabb only

clover nature silence leaf inquiry mystery

Trumbull Stickney only

hour presence past lake boatman heart beauty memory vitality

From the biographies

memory

John Banister Tabb: the forest, father tabb, sidney lanier, catholic seminary, american civil war, blockade runner, point lookout, alfred curtis. Trumbull Stickney: geneva, boston, harvard college, william vaughn moody, george santayana, dramatic lyrics, greek tragedy, american school of classical studies.

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.

Clover
John Banister Tabb
72% world, divine
Compare
Live blindly and upon the hour
Trumbull Stickney
Clover
John Banister Tabb
69% world
Compare
In the Past
Trumbull Stickney

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
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'

John Banister Tabb

1859 Tabb's Education Begins
1861 Civil War Service
1864 Imprisonment and Awakening of Poetry
1884 Ordination as a Catholic Priest
1894 First Published Poems
1900 Major Literary Recognition
1910 Posthumous Recognition

Trumbull Stickney

1886 Trumbull Stickney's Early Education
1891 Enrollment at Harvard University
1894 Publication of First Poems
1895 Friendship with William Vaughn Moody
1896 Graduation from Harvard University
1900 Publication of 'The Poems of Trumbull Stickney'
1901 Illness and Declining Health
1902 Final Years in Paris

Emotional landscapes

John Banister Tabb: Wonder, Longing, Tenderness. Trumbull Stickney: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.

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