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

John Burroughs John Burroughs

Poet B

George Edward Woodberry George Edward Woodberry
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 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Burroughs

John Burroughs

3 April 1837 – 29 March 1921 (~84)
1 live poem · English

On a spring morning in the Catskill Mountains, an elderly man with a flowing white beard sits beneath a gnarled apple tree, notebook in hand, watching a hermit thrush build its nest. This is John Burroughs in his element—not in a library or lecture hall, but in the cathedral of nature itself. For more than six decades, Burroughs served as America's interpreter of the natural world, transforming simple observations of…

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Nature Poets, Transcendentalists, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Joy
Listen Timeline Affinities
George Edward Woodberry

George Edward Woodberry

12 May 1855 – 2 January 1930 (~75)
1 live poem · English

The Woodberrys—or Woodburys, as various spellings of the name exist—were an old New England family who had immigrated early in the colonial period and established deep roots along Massachusetts's North Shore. Since settlement took hold in Beverly and neighboring seaport towns, the family had been native to this maritime region, and many of Woodberry's forebears were sea captains and sailors. This ancestral connection…

“The great use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life.”

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

In time

John Burroughs
George Edward Woodberry
1837 1930
They overlapped for 67 years (1855–1921). When George Edward Woodberry was born, John Burroughs was about 18. George Edward Woodberry was about 66 when John Burroughs died.
John Burroughs in history George Edward Woodberry in history Years they were given

On the map

About 304 km separate Roxbury, New York, USA from Beverly, Massachusetts, USA. Both have ground in New York.

John Burroughs

George Edward Woodberry

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.

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

John Burroughs only

waiting cosmic trust destiny life self patience

George Edward Woodberry only

stars silence lament universe pain gulf soul

From the biographies

ralph waldo emerson philosophical

John Burroughs: catskill mountains, roxbury, new york, walt whitman, ralph waldo emerson, wake-robin, slabsides, riverby, theodore roosevelt. George Edward Woodberry: massachusetts, harvard college, edgar allan poe, the north shore watch, the nation, columbia university, comparative literature, philosophy.

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.

Waiting
John Burroughs
74%
Compare
A Lament
George Edward Woodberry

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1856 Invention of the Bessemer Process for Mass Steel Production
1856 Mauveine Synthetic Dye Invention
1856 Perkin's Accidental Discovery of Mauveine
1857 Pasteur Demonstrates the Biological Basis of Fermentation
1858 Publication of 'There is a Green Hill Far Away'
1858 Publication of Ionica
1859 Discovery of Oil at Drake Well Sparks Pennsylvania Petroleum Boom
1859 Publication of 'Adam Bede'

John Burroughs

1856 Education at the New York State Normal School
1860 Marriage to Ursula B. Burroughs
1871 Publication of 'Wake-Robin'
1873 Friendship with Walt Whitman
1900 Publication of 'The Light of Day'
1905 Establishment of 'The John Burroughs Association'
1910 Publication of 'The Breath of Life'
1912 Recognition by the National Institute of Arts and Letters

George Edward Woodberry

1872 Graduation from Phillips Exeter Academy
1875 Return to Harvard College
1876 Contributions to the Atlantic Monthly
1877 Graduation from Harvard College
1885 Publication of 'The Life of Edgar Allan Poe'
1892 Appointment as Professor of English Literature
1920 Awarded the Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
1926 Publication of 'The Life of Edgar Allan Poe'

Emotional landscapes

John Burroughs: Peace, Spirituality, Joy. George Edward Woodberry: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.

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