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

Elizabeth Stoddard Elizabeth Stoddard

Poet B

Elizabeth Prentiss Elizabeth Prentiss
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 77% Poems 82% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Elizabeth Stoddard

Elizabeth Stoddard

6 May 1823 – 1 August 1902 (~79)
2 live poems · English

On a spring day in 1823, in the small coastal village of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, a child was born who would grow to become one of the most original and underappreciated voices in nineteenth-century American literature. Elizabeth Drew Barstow entered the world on May 6, in a town where the rhythms of the sea shaped daily existence and where salt spray and shipbuilding defined the community's character. The second…

“I wish that I could know your inner life to have your contrasted experiences.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality
Elizabeth Prentiss

Elizabeth Prentiss

26 October 1818 – 13 August 1878 (~60)
3 live poems · English

Elizabeth Prentiss, born Elizabeth Payson on 26 October 1818 in Portland, Maine, and dead on 13 August 1878 in Dorset, Vermont, belonged to that important company of nineteenth-century American women whose literary influence was felt most deeply in homes, churches, and private devotional reading rather than in the official institutions of literary prestige. She was a poet, hymn writer, novelist, teacher, minister’s w…

“I love you harder than I tell, or can tell you.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness

In time

Elizabeth Stoddard
Elizabeth Prentiss
1818 1902
They overlapped for 56 years (1823–1878). When Elizabeth Stoddard was born, Elizabeth Prentiss was about 5. Elizabeth Stoddard was about 55 when Elizabeth Prentiss died.

On the map

About 227 km separate Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, USA from Portland, Maine, 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

women fiction novel domestic

Elizabeth Stoddard: mattapoisett, new york city, richard henry stoddard, nathaniel hawthorne, the morgesons, two men, temple house, wheaton female seminary. Elizabeth Prentiss: portland, maine, dorset, vermont, more love to thee, o christ, stepping heavenward, george lewis prentiss, edward payson, second congregational church, evangelical fiction.

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.

November
Elizabeth Stoddard
76% loss
Compare
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
76%
Compare
Not Poor
Elizabeth Prentiss
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
75% life
Compare
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
November
Elizabeth Stoddard
73%
Compare
Healing
Elizabeth Prentiss
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
69% world
Compare
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Elizabeth Prentiss
November
Elizabeth Stoddard
66%
Compare
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
Elizabeth Prentiss

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Stoddard: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality. Elizabeth Prentiss: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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