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

Edna St. Vincent Millay Edna St. Vincent Millay

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 82% Poems 88% Blended 85%
Swap sides Another related pair
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

22 February 1892 – 19 October 1950 (~58)
100 live poems · English

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22 February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, and died on 19 October 1950 at her home in Austerlitz, New York. During her lifetime she became one of the most visible and commercially successful poets in the United States: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a celebrated public reader, a playwright, a lyricist, a political writer, and an emblem of the modern, sexually independent “New Woman.” Her fame…

“The poet is not a man who says what he thinks, but a man who says what he feels.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Confessional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
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…

“Hopeless visionary, am I not?”

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

In time

Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edith M. Thomas
1854 1950
They overlapped for 34 years (1892–1925). When Edna St. Vincent Millay was born, Edith M. Thomas was about 38. Edna St. Vincent Millay was about 33 when Edith M. Thomas died.
Edna St. Vincent Millay in history Edith M. Thomas in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,183 km separate Rockland, Maine, USA from Chatham, Ohio, USA. Both have ground in New York.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edith M. Thomas

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

life beauty heart

Edna St. Vincent Millay only

world love self desire death beloved nature grief pain women memory woman

Edith M. Thomas only

garden purpose vobis admiration unfulfilled creation flowers dahlias voice

From the biographies

sonnet women york

Edna St. Vincent Millay: rockland, maine, austerlitz, new york, pulitzer prize, renascence, caroline b. dow, vassar college, greenwich village, a few figs from thistles. 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.

Doubt no more that Oberon
Edna St. Vincent Millay
82%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
I dreamed I moved among the Elysian fields
Edna St. Vincent Millay
81%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
To a Poet that Died Young
Edna St. Vincent Millay
80% beauty
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
Sorrow
Edna St. Vincent Millay
80%
Compare
Vos Non Vobis
Edith M. Thomas
Elegy before Death
Edna St. Vincent Millay
79% life, beauty
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas
What lips my lips have kissed
Edna St. Vincent Millay
79% life
Compare
Frost To-Night
Edith M. Thomas

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'

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1907 Publication of 'Renascence' and Early Recognition
1913 Matriculation at Vassar College
1917 Graduation from Vassar College
1917 Move to Greenwich Village
1917 Publication of 'Renascence and Other Poems'
1923 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1923 Publication of 'The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems'
1936 Car Accident Causing Chronic Pain and Leading to Drug Dependency (1936)

Edith M. Thomas

1860 Early Education and Literary Influences of Edith M. Thomas
1872 Brief Attendance at Oberlin College
1885 First Major Publication in The Atlantic Monthly
1897 Publication of 'In the Green Mountains'
1900 Friendship with Poet Amy Lowell
1910 Publication of 'The Round Year'
1915 Involvement in Women's Literary Circles
1925 Final Years and Legacy

Emotional landscapes

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Edith M. Thomas: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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