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

Stephen Crane Stephen Crane

Poet B

Cale Young Rice Cale Young Rice
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 87% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane

1 November 1871 – 5 June 1900 (~29)
3 live poems · English

Stephen Crane, born 1 November 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, and dead of tuberculosis on 5 June 1900 in Badenweiler, Germany, lived only twenty-eight years, yet his work altered the direction of American fiction, journalism, and poetry. He is commonly placed among the major writers of literary naturalism, beside such figures as Frank Norris and Theodore Dreiser, but the label only partly contains him. Crane was at once…

“Personally I am aware that my work does not amount to a string of dried beans—I always calmly admit it. But I also know that I do the best that is in me, without regard to cheers or damnation.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Modernist Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Cale Young Rice

Cale Young Rice

7 December 1872 – 24 January 1943 (~71)
8 live poems · English

Cale Young Rice was born on 7 December 1872 in Dixon, Kentucky, and died on 24 January 1943 in Louisville, Kentucky. During his lifetime he was a conspicuous, if never wholly central, figure in American letters: a poet of formal accomplishment, a playwright attracted to historical spectacle and moral conflict, a lecturer, traveler, and public literary presence. In the decades around 1900, when American poetry stood b…

“Yet the romanticist would seem to have the better theoretical viewpoint.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Dramatic Poets, Edwardian Poets, Georgian Poets, Nature Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Stephen Crane
Cale Young Rice
1871 1943
They overlapped for 29 years (1872–1900). When Cale Young Rice was born, Stephen Crane was about 1. Cale Young Rice was about 28 when Stephen Crane died.
Stephen Crane in history Cale Young Rice in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,218 km separate Newark, New Jersey, USA from Dixon, Kentucky, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Stephen Crane

Cale Young Rice

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

death grief

Stephen Crane only

violence weep glory soldiers maiden seer book wisdom knowledge blindness encounter urban

Cale Young Rice only

life world woman grave beauty nature mother moor quest journey sublime mystic

From the biographies

social

Stephen Crane: newark, new jersey, badenweiler, the red badge of courage, maggie: a girl of the streets, literary naturalism, frank norris, theodore dreiser. Cale Young Rice: dixon, kentucky, alice hegan rice, from dusk to dusk, many gods, a night in avignon, nirvana days, cumberland university, harvard university.

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.

A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
78%
Compare
The Shrine of Shrines
Cale Young Rice
A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
76%
Compare
The Mystic
Cale Young Rice
A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
76%
Compare
Sea-Hoardings
Cale Young Rice
A slant of sun on dull brown walls
Stephen Crane
75%
Compare
Wanting the Moon
Cale Young Rice
I met a seer
Stephen Crane
74%
Compare
The Mystic
Cale Young Rice
I met a seer
Stephen Crane
73%
Compare
Incredible!
Cale Young Rice

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1873 Maxwell publishes Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in Cambridge
1873 Rimbaud's 'A Season in Hell' Composition
1876 1876-78 Super El Niño Causes Worldwide Famines
1876 Gerard Manley Hopkins composes his major poems
1879 Edison Demonstrates the Carbon-Filament Incandescent Lamp
1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'

Stephen Crane

1880 Crane's Family Relocation to Asbury Park
1895 Crane's Involvement with the New York Press
1895 Publication of 'The Black Riders'
1895 Publication of 'The Red Badge of Courage'
1897 Crane's Move to England
1897 Publication of 'The Open Boat'
1898 Crane's Experience in the Spanish-American War
1899 Publication of 'War is Kind'

Cale Young Rice

1890 Education at Cumberland University
1894 Education at Harvard University
1900 Publication of 'From Dusk to Dusk'
1908 Publication of 'Nirvana Days'
1910 Move to New York City
1915 Friendship with Robert Frost
1921 Publication of 'The Book of the Dead'
1930 Publication of 'The Ghost of the Sun'

Emotional landscapes

Stephen Crane: Irony, Sorrow, Despair. Cale Young Rice: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality.

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