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

Walt Whitman Walt Whitman

Poet B

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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 73% Poems 91% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

31 May 1819 – 26 March 1892 (~73)
9 live poems · English

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in a modest farmhouse in West Hills, on Long Island, New York, into a working-class family that embodied the restless energy and struggles of early America. He was the second of nine children born to Walter Whitman, a carpenter and farmer of English descent who wrestled with financial instability, and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, whose Dutch heritage brought a touch of earthy prac…

“Come, ye disconsolate, in whom any latent eligibility is left—come get the sure virtues of creek-shore, and wood and field.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

27 February 1807 – 24 March 1882 (~75)
69 live poems · English

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on 27 February 1807 in Portland, Maine, then a bustling coastal town in Massachusetts, and died on 24 March 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his lifetime he became, by a considerable margin, the most famous American poet of the nineteenth century. His verses were memorized in schools, recited in parlors, printed in newspapers, sung, parodied, and carried across the Atlantic…

“The heart, like the mind, has a memory. And in it are kept the most precious keepsakes of the past.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder

In time

Walt Whitman
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807 1892
They overlapped for 64 years (1819–1882). When Walt Whitman was born, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was about 12. Walt Whitman was about 63 when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow died.

On the map

About 405 km separate West Hills, Long Island, New York, 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

Walt Whitman: long island, brooklyn, leaves of grass, song of myself, drum-taps, abraham lincoln, ralph waldo emerson, free verse. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: portland maine, bowdoin college, nathaniel hawthorne, frances appleton, paul revere’s ride, the village blacksmith, the song of hiawatha, outre-mer.

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.

O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
84% ship
Compare
The Cumberland
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Whispers of Heavenly Death
Walt Whitman
83% death
Compare
Footsteps of Angels
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As if a Phantom Caress’d Me
Walt Whitman
82% world
Compare
The Open Window
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman
81%
Compare
Killed at the Ford
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As if a Phantom Caress’d Me
Walt Whitman
81% beloved, world
Compare
A Gleam of Sunshine
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As if a Phantom Caress’d Me
Walt Whitman
80% beloved
Compare
Footsteps of Angels
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Walt Whitman: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder.

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