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.

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

Max Ehrmann Max Ehrmann

Poet B

James Oppenheim James Oppenheim
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 71% Poems 83% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann

26 September 1872 – 9 September 1945 (~73)
2 live poems · English

Max Ehrmann was born on 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and died there on 9 September 1945, seventeen days before his seventy-third birthday. He is remembered almost everywhere as the author of “Desiderata,” the compact prose poem beginning, “Go placidly amid the noise and haste,” but that single work represents only the most widely circulated part of a long, earnest, and sometimes overlooked literary life…

“At DePauw I contracted a disease which I have never shaken off. The disease was idealism. Because of it I did the thing in life I wanted to do—Writing.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities
James Oppenheim

James Oppenheim

24 May 1882 – 4 August 1932 (~50)
2 live poems · English

James Oppenheim, born on 24 May 1882 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and dead on 4 August 1932 in New York City, belonged to that fervent generation of American writers who wanted literature to enter the streets. He was a poet, novelist, editor, social observer, and eventually an interpreter of the psyche. His name is most often remembered through “Bread and Roses,” the ringing labor poem that gave memorable language to the…

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Anger, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Max Ehrmann
James Oppenheim
1872 1945
They overlapped for 51 years (1882–1932). When James Oppenheim was born, Max Ehrmann was about 10. Max Ehrmann was about 60 when James Oppenheim died.
Max Ehrmann in history James Oppenheim in history Years they were given

On the map

About 768 km separate Terre Haute, Indiana, USA from St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Max Ehrmann

James Oppenheim

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

life world

Max Ehrmann only

desiderata existence wisdom advice nature peace love social afraid self

James Oppenheim only

bread roses women collective beauty industrial creator spider humanity philosophical

From the biographies

culture

Max Ehrmann: terre haute, desiderata, bertha pratt king, depaul university, harvard university, delta tau delta, a fearsome riddle, the wife of marobius. James Oppenheim: st. paul, minnesota, new york city, bread and roses, joseph oppenheim, lucy seckel, the nine-tenths, monday morning and other poems, hudson guild.

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.

Desiderata
Max Ehrmann
75% life
Compare
Bread and Roses
James Oppenheim
Desiderata
Max Ehrmann
74% life
Compare
Man, the Creator!
James Oppenheim
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
73% world
Compare
Man, the Creator!
James Oppenheim
I Sit Afraid
Max Ehrmann
70%
Compare
Bread and Roses
James Oppenheim

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine

Max Ehrmann

1894 Graduation from DePauw University
1896 Admission to the Indiana Bar
1903 Marriage to Sara D. McCulloch
1927 Publication of 'Desiderata'
1931 Relocation to California
1935 Friendship with poet James Whitcomb Riley
1940 Publication of 'The Book of Life'
1960 Posthumous recognition of 'Desiderata'

James Oppenheim

1884 Relocation to New York City
1901 Early Work at Hudson Guild Settlement House
1905 Marriage to Lucy Seckel
1905 Teaching at New York Hebrew Technical School for Girls
1911 Publication of 'The Book of Poems'
1912 Friendship with Edna St. Vincent Millay
1915 Founding of the Poetry Society of America
1920 Publication of 'The Great American Novel'

Emotional landscapes

Max Ehrmann: Tenderness, Spirituality, Peace. James Oppenheim: Anger, Longing, Sorrow.

Skip to main content