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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

Alfred Lord Tennyson Alfred Lord Tennyson

Poet B

Eugene Field Eugene Field
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 67% Poems 83% Blended 74%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892 (~83)
27 live poems · English

Alfred Tennyson, later Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was born on 6 August 1809 at Somersby rectory in Lincolnshire, England, and died on 6 October 1892 at Lurgashall in Sussex. During his long life he became the defining poetic voice of the Victorian age: at once a public laureate who wrote for national occasions and a private, searching poet whose work returned obsessively to bereavement, desire, religious uncertainty, mem…

“My book is out and I hate it, and so no doubt will you. Never mind, you will like me none the worse.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow
Eugene Field

Eugene Field

2 September 1850 – 4 November 1895 (~45)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of American literature, few figures occupy such a unique and enduring position as Eugene Field, the beloved "Children's Poet" whose gentle verses about childhood, dreams, and imagination have captivated readers for over a century. Born into the rough-and-tumble world of frontier America and dying at the height of the Gilded Age, Field's life spanned a transformative period in American history, yet his…

“Debs is sincere. His heart is as gentle as a woman's and as fresh as a mountain brook.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Children's Verse, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Wonder

In time

Alfred Lord Tennyson
Eugene Field
1809 1895
They overlapped for 43 years (1850–1892). When Eugene Field was born, Alfred Lord Tennyson was about 41. Eugene Field was about 42 when Alfred Lord Tennyson died.

On the map

About 6,683 km separate Somersby, Lincolnshire, England from St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

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

social

Alfred Lord Tennyson: somersby, lincolnshire, victorian age, arthur henry hallam, in memoriam, the lady of shalott, the lotos-eaters, ulysses. Eugene Field: st. louis, gilded age, roswell field, frances reed field, mary field french, williams college, knox college, st. joseph gazette.

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.

Sweet and low, sweet and low
Alfred Lord Tennyson
77% mother, father
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
The Miller’s Daughter
Alfred Lord Tennyson
73%
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
The Islet
Alfred Lord Tennyson
71%
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
The Merman
Alfred Lord Tennyson
69%
Compare
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
Eugene Field
Tears, Idle Tears
Alfred Lord Tennyson
69% love
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field
Come into the garden, Maud
Alfred Lord Tennyson
69% love, world
Compare
Gold and Love for Dearie
Eugene Field

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alfred Lord Tennyson: Wonder, Longing, Sorrow. Eugene Field: Tenderness, Joy, Wonder.

Skip to main content