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

Archibald MacLeish Archibald MacLeish

Poet B

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
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.

Somewhat related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 55% Blended 55%
Swap sides Another related pair
Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish

7 May 1892 – 20 April 1982 (~90)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of twentieth-century American letters, few figures embodied as many contradictions and reconciliations as Archibald MacLeish. Born on May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois, and dying on April 20, 1982, in Boston, Massachusetts, MacLeish lived through nearly the entire span of the American century, bearing witness to two world wars, the Great Depression, the atomic age, and the cultural revolutions that re…

“The freedom of the poet is not the freedom to say anything he pleases, but the freedom to say what he must.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

8 December 1832 – 26 April 1910 (~78)
1 live poem · Norwegian

Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was born on 8 December 1832 in Kvikne, a mountain district in what is now Innlandet, Norway, and died on 26 April 1910 in Paris. During his long life he became, by turns and often simultaneously, a novelist, poet, dramatist, editor, theatre director, lecturer, political agitator, public moralist, farmer, husband, father, and international advocate for national self-determination. Few w…

“It has often been the case that whoever brought light and warmth to others had to freeze themselves.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Hymn Writers, Nature Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Archibald MacLeish
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
1832 1982
They overlapped for 19 years (1892–1910). When Archibald MacLeish was born, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was about 60. Archibald MacLeish was about 18 when Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson died.
Archibald MacLeish in history Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 6,336 km separate Glencoe, Illinois, USA from Kvikne, Norway. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Archibald MacLeish

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

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.

Archibald MacLeish only

world dead history witness legend youth grief dance romance life stars wheat

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson only

princess horn sound silence longing yearning music heart bjørnson

From the biographies

Archibald MacLeish: glencoe, illinois, harvard law school, ada hitchcock, the hamlet of a. macleish, conquistador, pulitzer prize, the happy marriage and other poems, the pot of earth. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: kvikne, ja, vi elsker dette landet, synnøve solbakken, four greats, karoline reimers, norwegian theatre, mellem slagene, sigurd slembe.

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.

Youth is old before his time
Archibald MacLeish
68%
Compare
The Princess
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
The Too-Late Born
Archibald MacLeish
65%
Compare
The Princess
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks
1895 Publication of 'The Red Badge of Courage'

Archibald MacLeish

1911 Enrollment at Yale University
1917 First Major Publication: 'The Pot of Earth'
1918 Service in World War I
1932 Publication of 'Conquistador'
1939 Appointment as Librarian of Congress
1941 Publication of 'The Land of the Free'
1952 Nobel Prize in Literature
1967 Publication of 'The New Earth'

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

1846 Education at Molde School
1850 Move to Christiania (Oslo)
1857 First Major Publication: 'Synnøve Solbakken'
1858 Marriage to Karoline Bjørnson
1860 Involvement in Norwegian Nationalism
1860 Publication of 'Arne' and 'The Fisherman'
1880 Publication of 'The Last of the Vikings'
1903 Nobel Prize in Literature

Emotional landscapes

Archibald MacLeish: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.

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