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

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
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…

“The best of Owen's poems are far indeed from this; and that is their virtue.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Imagist Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness
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…

“I think I never was young.”

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

In time

Alice Corbin
Edith M. Thomas
1854 1949
They overlapped for 45 years (1881–1925). When Alice Corbin was born, Edith M. Thomas was about 27. Alice Corbin was about 44 when Edith M. Thomas died.

On the map

About 686 km separate St. Louis, Missouri, 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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

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. 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.

America
Alice Corbin
79%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
Love Me at Last
Alice Corbin
79%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
The Failing Moon
Alice Corbin
76% life
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
The Star
Alice Corbin
76%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
Jehovah
Alice Corbin
75% heart, creation
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
The Failing Moon
Alice Corbin
74%
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

Alice Corbin: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness. Edith M. Thomas: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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