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

James Shirley James Shirley

Poet B

Sir William Davenant Sir William Davenant
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 77% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
James Shirley

James Shirley

September 1596 – 29 October 1666 (~70)
1 live poem · English

James Shirley, born in September 1596 and buried on 29 October 1666, was the last major dramatist of England’s long Renaissance theatrical age. His life extended from the final years of Elizabeth I through the reigns of James I and Charles I, the civil wars, the Puritan Commonwealth, and the first years of the Restoration. That span placed him at the center of extraordinary transformations in English religion, politi…

“It is now public, to satisfy the importunity of friends: I will only add, it is like to be the last, for in my resolve, nothing of this nature shall, after this, engage either my pen or invention.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Irony, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Sir William Davenant

Sir William Davenant

c. February 1606 – 7 April 1668 (~62)
1 live poem · English

Sir William Davenant, baptized on 3 March 1606 and buried on 9 April 1668 after his death on 7 April, was one of the great survivors and reinvigorators of seventeenth-century English literary culture. Poet, playwright, court servant, royalist officer, prisoner, theatrical entrepreneur, and eventually the leading architect of Restoration stage practice, he lived through an age in which a writer’s career could be trans…

“Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

James Shirley
Sir William Davenant
1596 1668
They overlapped for 61 years (1606–1666). When Sir William Davenant was born, James Shirley was about 10. Sir William Davenant was about 60 when James Shirley died.
James Shirley in history Sir William Davenant in history Years they were given

On the map

About 83 km separate London, England from Oxford, England. Both have ground in London.

James Shirley

Sir William Davenant

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.

James Shirley only

death justice blood dust christian

Sir William Davenant only

beloved lark dawn lover world window love woman eyes

From the biographies

drama theatre court restoration

James Shirley: london, merchant taylors' school, st john's college, william laud, the triumph of peace, hyde park, the ball, the lady of pleasure. Sir William Davenant: oxford, crown tavern, frances stuart, fulke greville, the cruel brother, the temple of love, gondibert, poet laureate.

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.

Song from 'Ajax and Ulysses.'
James Shirley
71%
Compare
The lark now leaves his wat'ry nest
Sir William Davenant

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1615 Cervantes publishes the second part of Don Quixote
1616 Death of William Shakespeare
1619 First Africans Arrive in Virginia
1620 Mayflower Carries the Pilgrims to New England
1620 Sailing of the Mayflower
1620 The Mayflower Compact is Signed
1623 Publication of 'The First Folio' of William Shakespeare (1623)
1623 The Miraculous Preservation of the First Folio

James Shirley

1625 Conversion to Catholicism
1625 First Play Performed: 'Love Tricks'
1626 Appointment as a Schoolmaster
1631 Major Work: 'The Traitor'
1635 Publication of 'The Lady of Pleasure'
1641 Publication of 'The Cardinal'
1641 Relocation to Ireland

Sir William Davenant

1627 First Play Premiered: The Cruel Brother
1630 Publication of The Just Italian
1638 Appointment as Poet Laureate
1641 Imprisonment and Escape to France
1642 Royalist Appointment During Civil War
1650 Capture While Attempting to Sail to Virginia
1650 Intervention by John Milton
1650 Publication of Gondibert

Emotional landscapes

James Shirley: Sorrow, Irony, Despair. Sir William Davenant: Longing, Wonder, Tenderness.

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