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

Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson
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 89% 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…

“As I have not many good qualities of disposition I feel sure of this, which as many a member of my family have told me, makes me often hateful. My father said once he never saw any human being with such a talent for the disagreeable.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson

10 December 1830 – 15 May 1886 (~56)
185 live poems · English

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, and died there on 15 May 1886. During her lifetime she was known, if at all beyond her immediate circle, as the daughter of a prominent local family, an unusually lively correspondent, a gardener, and eventually a woman who lived with increasing privacy. After her death, she emerged as one of the most startling and essential poets in th…

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Confessional Poets, Death & Mortality, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Elizabeth Stoddard
Emily Dickinson
1823 1902
They overlapped for 57 years (1830–1886). When Emily Dickinson was born, Elizabeth Stoddard was about 7. Elizabeth Stoddard was about 63 when Emily Dickinson died.
Elizabeth Stoddard in history Emily Dickinson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 162 km separate Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, USA from Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. Both have ground in Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Stoddard

Emily Dickinson

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

nature world death life

Elizabeth Stoddard only

november autumn beauty loss philosophical tradition landscape birds spring return

Emily Dickinson only

self divine spiritual soul suffering religious love social pain bird desire heaven

From the biographies

domestic

Elizabeth Stoddard: mattapoisett, new york city, richard henry stoddard, nathaniel hawthorne, the morgesons, two men, temple house, wheaton female seminary. Emily Dickinson: amherst, massachusetts, edward dickinson, susan gilbert, because i could not stop for death, fascicles, mount holyoke female seminary, civil war.

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 Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
83% nature, world, life
Compare
New feet within my garden go
Emily Dickinson
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
83% nature, world, life
Compare
Two Worlds
Emily Dickinson
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
82% nature, birds, spring
Compare
The saddest noise, the sweetest noise
Emily Dickinson
November
Elizabeth Stoddard
81% nature
Compare
New feet within my garden go
Emily Dickinson
A Landscape
Elizabeth Stoddard
81% death
Compare
Joy in Death
Emily Dickinson
November
Elizabeth Stoddard
80% nature
Compare
The saddest noise, the sweetest noise
Emily Dickinson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1830 Indian Removal Act of 1830
1831 Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction in London
1831 HMS Beagle Begins Darwin's Survey Voyage
1831 Michael Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Induction
1831 Publication of 'Canti'
1833 The Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire
1834 Publication of 'Philip van Artevelde'
1836 Publication of 'Nature'

Elizabeth Stoddard

1841 Move to New York City
1850 Marriage to James H. Stoddard
1862 Publication of 'The Morgesons'
1865 Publication of 'Two Men'
1870 Move to San Francisco
1874 Publication of 'The Story of the Morgesons'
1886 Publication of 'The Old Woman'

Emily Dickinson

1840 Emily Dickinson Enters Amherst Academy
1844 Death of Second Cousin Sophia Holland
1847 Religious Crisis and 'No-Hoper' Status at Mount Holyoke
1855 First and Only Extended Journey: Washington and Philadelphia
1858 Beginning of Fascicle-Making: Formal Copying of Poems
1862 Emily Dickinson Begins Corresponding with Thomas Wentworth Higginson
1886 Discovery and Initial Editing of Poems Posthumously
1886 Emily Dickinson's Posthumous Discovery by Sister Lavinia

Emotional landscapes

Elizabeth Stoddard: Sorrow, Wonder, Spirituality. Emily Dickinson: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

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