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

Robert Nathaniel Dett Robert Nathaniel Dett

Poet B

Sir Samuel Ferguson Sir Samuel Ferguson
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 54% Blended 54%
Swap sides Another related pair
Robert Nathaniel Dett

Robert Nathaniel Dett

11 October 1882 – 2 October 1943 (~61)
3 live poems · English

Robert Nathaniel Dett entered the world on October 11, 1882, in the small village of Drummondville, Ontario—now absorbed into the bustling splendor of Niagara Falls, Canada—amid the roar of one of nature’s most awe-inspiring wonders. He left it on October 2, 1943, at the age of sixty, felled by a heart attack in Battle Creek, Michigan, while tirelessly touring with a USO chorus to lift the spirits of troops during Wo…

“If a choir can't interpret world music, it cannot interpret Negro music. Our endeavor is to do both.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Love Poets, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Sir Samuel Ferguson

Sir Samuel Ferguson

10 March 1810 – 9 August 1886 (~76)
1 live poem · English

Sir Samuel Ferguson was born in Belfast on 10 March 1810, at a moment when Ireland’s political union with Great Britain was still recent and its cultural future was fiercely contested. He died in Howth, County Dublin, on 9 August 1886, having become one of the most distinctive Irish literary figures of the nineteenth century: poet, barrister, judge, antiquary, translator, public servant, and advocate for the serious…

“I was an Irishman before I was a Protestant.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Robert Nathaniel Dett
Sir Samuel Ferguson
1810 1943
They overlapped for 5 years (1882–1886). When Robert Nathaniel Dett was born, Sir Samuel Ferguson was about 72. Robert Nathaniel Dett was about 4 when Sir Samuel Ferguson died.
Robert Nathaniel Dett in history Sir Samuel Ferguson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,234 km separate Drummondville, Ontario, Canada from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Robert Nathaniel Dett

Sir Samuel Ferguson

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

love heart

Robert Nathaniel Dett only

music staccato etude rubinstein laughter piano sound spiritual conjured folk spirituals composer

Sir Samuel Ferguson only

beloved irish ferguson

From the biographies

Robert Nathaniel Dett: drummondville, niagara falls, battle creek, the album of a heart, after the cakewalk, listen to the lambs, hampton institute, antonín dvořák. Sir Samuel Ferguson: belfast, howth, mary catherine guinness, hibernian nights' entertainments, lays of the western gael, the forging of the anchor, ulster cycle, irish antiquarianism.

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.

Yield but thy love to me
Robert Nathaniel Dett
78% love, heart
Compare
Cean Dubh Deelish
Sir Samuel Ferguson
Conjured
Robert Nathaniel Dett
72% love
Compare
Cean Dubh Deelish
Sir Samuel Ferguson
The Rubinstein Staccato Etude
Robert Nathaniel Dett
64%
Compare
Cean Dubh Deelish
Sir Samuel Ferguson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine

Robert Nathaniel Dett

1907 Education at the Oberlin Conservatory
1911 Publication of 'The Album of a Heart'
1913 Dett Joins the Faculty of Hampton Institute
1919 Founding of the National Association of Negro Musicians
1930 Choral Directorship at Hampton Institute
1937 Premiere of the Oratorio 'The Ordering of Moses'
1942 Touring with the USO during WWII
1943 Recognition by the American Academy of Arts and Letters

Sir Samuel Ferguson

1837 Marriage to Mary Anne McGowan
1846 Publication of 'The Forging of the Anchor'
1849 Appointment as a Barrister
1851 Publication of 'Lays of the Western Gael'
1867 Becoming Chief Baron of the Irish Court of Exchequer
1876 Publication of 'The Last of the Irish Chiefs'
1885 Knighted for Public Service
1886 Final Publication: 'Poems and Translations'

Emotional landscapes

Robert Nathaniel Dett: Tenderness, Joy, Longing. Sir Samuel Ferguson: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality.

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