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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Poet B

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth
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 76% Poems 94% Blended 84%
Swap sides Another related pair
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…

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets, Transcendentalists
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850 (~80)
51 live poems · English

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the northwestern corner of England, and died on 23 April 1850 at Rydal Mount in the Lake District. Few poets have altered English literary culture so thoroughly. With Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wordsworth helped establish the principles of British Romanticism: a new seriousness about ordinary life, a conviction that emotional experience could be…

“The earliest poets of all nations generally wrote from passion excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
William Wordsworth
1770 1882
They overlapped for 44 years (1807–1850). When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born, William Wordsworth was about 37. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was about 43 when William Wordsworth died.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in history William Wordsworth in history Years they were given

On the map

About 4,818 km separate Portland, Maine, USA from Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

William Wordsworth

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 nature memory spiritual love beauty

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow only

death divine grief loss suffering harvest voice history light

William Wordsworth only

romantic mind self bird social power water freedom liberty

From the biographies

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: portland maine, bowdoin college, nathaniel hawthorne, frances appleton, paul revere’s ride, the village blacksmith, the song of hiawatha, outre-mer. William Wordsworth: cockermouth, lake district, samuel taylor coleridge, the prelude, lyrical ballads, annette vallon, the borderers, the ruined cottage.

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.

Flowers
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
86% nature, world, spiritual
Compare
Bright Flower, whose home is every where!
William Wordsworth
To the River Charles
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
85% river, memory, nature, water
Compare
Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening
William Wordsworth
Flowers
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
84% nature
Compare
To the Daisy
William Wordsworth
An April Day
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
84% life, world, landscape
Compare
Written in March
William Wordsworth
Killed at the Ford
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
84%
Compare
Six thousand Veterans practis'd in War's game
William Wordsworth
A Gleam of Sunshine
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
84% memory
Compare
Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening
William Wordsworth

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1812 French Invasion of Russia Begins
1812 Publication of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage Cantos I and II
1812 The Harrowing Retreat from Moscow
1813 Imprisonment in Surrey Gaol
1815 1815 Tambora Eruption
1816 Byron and Lady Byron Separate
1816 The Year Without a Summer
1819 Shelley Writes Ode to the West Wind

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

1821 Longfellow Enters Bowdoin College
1826 Longfellow's First European Sojourn
1831 Marriage to Mary Storer Potter
1835 Death of First Wife Mary Potter Longfellow
1836 Appointment to Harvard Professorship
1839 Publication of Voices of the Night
1843 Marriage to Frances 'Fanny' Appleton
1861 Death of Second Wife Fanny Appleton Longfellow

William Wordsworth

1778 William Wordsworth's Loss of His Mother
1783 William Wordsworth's Loss of His Father
1795 William Wordsworth's Relationship with Dorothy Wordsworth
1797 William Wordsworth's Move to Alfoxden
1798 First Publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798)
1799 William Wordsworth's Move to Dove Cottage (1799)
1805 William Wordsworth's Publication of 'The Prelude'
1814 William Wordsworth's Publication of 'The Excursion'

Emotional landscapes

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Spirituality, Longing, Wonder. William Wordsworth: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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