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

Archibald MacLeish Archibald MacLeish

Poet B

George Marion McClellan George Marion McClellan
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 74% Poems 84% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish

7 May 1892 – 20 April 1982 (~90)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of twentieth-century American letters, few figures embodied as many contradictions and reconciliations as Archibald MacLeish. Born on May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois, and dying on April 20, 1982, in Boston, Massachusetts, MacLeish lived through nearly the entire span of the American century, bearing witness to two world wars, the Great Depression, the atomic age, and the cultural revolutions that re…

“What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Modernist Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
George Marion McClellan

George Marion McClellan

29 September 1860 – 17 May 1934 (~74)
4 live poems · English

George Marion McClellan was born on 29 September 1860 near Belfast, Tennessee, and died on 17 May 1934. His lifetime stretched from the final year of slavery in the United States through the Civil War, Reconstruction, the consolidation of Jim Crow segregation, the Great Migration, and the Harlem Renaissance. To read his poetry only as the work of a minor late-Victorian versifier would be to miss the extraordinary his…

“The epic of his race awaits a writer. The drama of an unwritten history covering about four centuries will welcome the facile pen of some gifted son or daughter.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Death & Mortality, Harlem Renaissance, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Archibald MacLeish
George Marion McClellan
1860 1982
They overlapped for 43 years (1892–1934). When Archibald MacLeish was born, George Marion McClellan was about 32. Archibald MacLeish was about 42 when George Marion McClellan died.
Archibald MacLeish in history George Marion McClellan in history Years they were given

On the map

About 745 km separate Glencoe, Illinois, USA from Belfast, Tennessee, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Archibald MacLeish

George Marion McClellan

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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Archibald MacLeish only

world dead history witness legend youth grief dance romance life stars wheat

George Marion McClellan only

love beloved butterfly church religious prayer spiritual freedom guilt hope farewell separation

From the biographies

Archibald MacLeish: glencoe, illinois, harvard law school, ada hitchcock, the hamlet of a. macleish, conquistador, pulitzer prize, the happy marriage and other poems, the pot of earth. George Marion McClellan: belfast, tennessee, fisk university, hartford theological seminary, paul laurence dunbar, james weldon johnson, poems, the path of dreams, harlem renaissance.

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.

Youth is old before his time
Archibald MacLeish
79% life
Compare
Resentment
George Marion McClellan
Youth is old before his time
Archibald MacLeish
78%
Compare
Sustaining Hope
George Marion McClellan
The Too-Late Born
Archibald MacLeish
75%
Compare
Resentment
George Marion McClellan
The Too-Late Born
Archibald MacLeish
73%
Compare
Sustaining Hope
George Marion McClellan
Youth is old before his time
Archibald MacLeish
71%
Compare
A Butterfly in Church
George Marion McClellan
Youth is old before his time
Archibald MacLeish
70% world
Compare
In the Heart of a Rose
George Marion McClellan

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1892 Opening of Ellis Island
1892 Valéry undergoes the Genoa crisis
1893 Co-founding of the Gaelic League
1893 Delivery of 'The Necessity for De-Anglicizing Ireland' Speech
1893 Publication of 'The Hound of Heaven'
1894 Death of Robert Louis Stevenson
1894 Valéry begins his lifelong notebooks
1895 Publication of 'The Red Badge of Courage'

Archibald MacLeish

1911 Enrollment at Yale University
1917 First Major Publication: 'The Pot of Earth'
1918 Service in World War I
1932 Publication of 'Conquistador'
1939 Appointment as Librarian of Congress
1941 Publication of 'The Land of the Free'
1952 Nobel Prize in Literature
1967 Publication of 'The New Earth'

George Marion McClellan

1885 Graduation from Fisk University
1895 Publication of 'Poems'
1903 Publication of 'The Path of Dreams'
1905 Move to New York City
1926 Publication of 'Songs of the Soul'

Emotional landscapes

Archibald MacLeish: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. George Marion McClellan: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.

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