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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Edwin Arlington Robinson Edwin Arlington Robinson

Poet B

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson
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 69% Poems 88% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson

22 December 1869 – 6 April 1935 (~66)
10 live poems · English

Edwin Arlington Robinson stands as one of the most distinctive and influential voices in American poetry. Renowned for his psychologically nuanced portraits, precise craftsmanship, and unflinching explorations of the human condition, Robinson’s work bridges the 19th and 20th centuries, offering both the rigor of tradition and the insights of modernity. His journey from the small towns of Maine to the literary heights…

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Edwardian Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

25 May 1803 – 27 April 1882 (~79)
47 live poems · English

Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 May 1803 and dead in Concord, Massachusetts, on 27 April 1882, became one of the defining voices of nineteenth-century American literature. He was at once a poet, essayist, lecturer, editor, religious dissenter, and public moralist, though no single title entirely contains him. His greatest influence lay in his ability to make philosophical inquiry sound urgen…

“In the actual world — the painful kingdom of time and place — dwell care, and canker, and fear.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 1935
They overlapped for 14 years (1869–1882). When Edwin Arlington Robinson was born, Ralph Waldo Emerson was about 66. Edwin Arlington Robinson was about 13 when Ralph Waldo Emerson died.
Edwin Arlington Robinson in history Ralph Waldo Emerson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 227 km separate Head Tide, Maine, USA from Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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 social self philosophical

Edwin Arlington Robinson only

death dead happiness limits enduring clerks humanity ordinary shop recognition roman wisdom

Ralph Waldo Emerson only

nature world spiritual divine love beauty individual soul power truth spirit reality

From the biographies

harvard

Edwin Arlington Robinson: head tide maine, gardiner maine, tilbury town, the torrent and the night before, the children of the night, richard cory, miniver cheevy, the man against the sky. Ralph Waldo Emerson: boston, concord, nature, transcendentalism, william emerson, mary moody emerson, ellen louisa tucker, lydia jackson.

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.

Horace to Leuconoë
Edwin Arlington Robinson
80%
Compare
To Ellen
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Horace to Leuconoë
Edwin Arlington Robinson
80%
Compare
Days
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Horace to Leuconoë
Edwin Arlington Robinson
80%
Compare
Manners
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Horace to Leuconoë
Edwin Arlington Robinson
79%
Compare
Nature
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Horace to Leuconoë
Edwin Arlington Robinson
78%
Compare
Eros
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Clerks
Edwin Arlington Robinson
78% philosophical
Compare
Days
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1869 Completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad
1870 Hardy Meets Emma Lavinia Gifford in Cornwall
1870 Second Industrial Revolution Accelerates
1871 Publication of 'Middlemarch'
1871 Publication of 'Rimas'
1873 Maxwell publishes Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in Cambridge
1873 Rimbaud's 'A Season in Hell' Composition
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems

Edwin Arlington Robinson

1891 Robinson's Enrollment at Harvard University
1896 Publication of First Book, 'The Torrent and the Nightingale'
1897 Publication of 'Children of the Night'
1897 Publication of 'The Children of the Night'
1904 Publication of 'The Man Who Died'
1921 Robinson's First Pulitzer Prize
1922 Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
1928 Robinson's Second Pulitzer Prize

Ralph Waldo Emerson

1817 Emerson Enters Harvard College (1817)
1829 Emerson's Ordination as a Unitarian Minister
1830 Emerson's Involvement in the Abolitionist Movement
1831 Death of Emerson's First Wife, Ellen Tucker
1836 Publication of 'Nature'
1841 Publication of 'Self-Reliance'
1842 Death of Emerson's Son, Waldo
1842 Publication of 'The Over-Soul'

Emotional landscapes

Edwin Arlington Robinson: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Wonder, Spirituality, Peace.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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