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

William Hughes Mearns William Hughes Mearns

Poet B

Myra Viola Wilds Myra Viola Wilds
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 62% Poems 73% Blended 67%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Hughes Mearns

William Hughes Mearns

28 September 1875 – 13 March 1965 (~90)
2 live poems · English

William Hughes Mearns entered the world on September 28, 1875, in the bustling streets of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of James H. Mearns and Lelia Cora Evans. From his very first breaths in that vibrant Quaker City, young William—soon to be known simply as Hughes Mearns—seemed destined to bridge the realms of imagination and instruction. He would grow into a man who taught the world not merely how to write, b…

“The old education set up an adult standard at every stage of growth. We are learning that the only standard which is effective for self-education is the one that is wholeheartedly accepted by the young people themselves.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Wonder, Fear
Myra Viola Wilds

Myra Viola Wilds

c. 1880 – c. 1935 (~55)
2 live poems · English

Myra Viola Wilds, born about 1880 and believed to have died about 1935, occupies an unusual and moving place in the history of American poetry. Her surviving reputation rests principally on a single small book, Thoughts of Idle Hours, published in 1915, yet the modest scale of that achievement should not obscure its significance. Wilds was a Kentucky-born poet, a dressmaker, a woman with limited formal education, and…

“Every line and verse in this little volume has been composed and written with my own hand notwithstanding the loss of my eyesight.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality

In time

William Hughes Mearns
Myra Viola Wilds
1875 1965
They overlapped for 56 years (1880–1935). When Myra Viola Wilds was born, William Hughes Mearns was about 5. William Hughes Mearns was about 60 when Myra Viola Wilds died.

On the map

About 755 km separate Camden, New Jersey, USA from Mount Ollie, Kentucky, 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

William Hughes Mearns: philadelphia, bearsville, the pedagogue, harvard university, john dewey, creative youth, u.s. army medical corps, the little man who wasn't there. Myra Viola Wilds: mount ollie, kentucky, thoughts of idle hours, blindness, dressmaker, 1915 publication, sunshine, limited education.

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.

Antigonish
William Hughes Mearns
66% life
Compare
Thoughts
Myra Viola Wilds
Antigonish
William Hughes Mearns
64% life
Compare
Dewdrops
Myra Viola Wilds
The Perfect Reactionary
William Hughes Mearns
62%
Compare
Thoughts
Myra Viola Wilds
The Perfect Reactionary
William Hughes Mearns
56%
Compare
Dewdrops
Myra Viola Wilds

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Hughes Mearns: Irony, Wonder, Fear. Myra Viola Wilds: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality.

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