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

Ben Jonson Ben Jonson

Poet B

George Gascoigne George Gascoigne
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 75% Poems 82% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

c. 11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637 (~65)
5 live poems · English

Ben Jonson, baptized on 11 June 1572 and probably born on or very near that date, entered the world in Westminster at a moment when London’s theatrical culture was beginning to assume the force and richness that would make the English Renaissance famous. He died on 6 August 1637, having become, in the course of sixty-five turbulent years, England’s most formidable classical dramatist, one of its finest lyric poets, a…

“By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
George Gascoigne

George Gascoigne

c. 1539 – 7 October 1577 (~38)
2 live poems · English

George Gascoigne, born about 1539 and dead on 7 October 1577, was one of the most adventurous and consequential writers of early Elizabethan England. Poet, translator, dramatist, critic, court entertainer, soldier, traveler, and sometime political aspirant, he lived with the instability and appetite that his writing so often dramatizes. His career was brief, troubled by debt, family conflict, legal suspicion, militar…

“the more monosyllables that you use, the truer Englishman you shall seem, and the less you shall smell of the inkhorn”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Joy

In time

Ben Jonson
George Gascoigne
1539 1637
They overlapped for 6 years (1572–1577). When Ben Jonson was born, George Gascoigne was about 33. Ben Jonson was about 5 when George Gascoigne died.

On the map

About 60 km separate Westminster, London, England from Cardington, Bedfordshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

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

From the biographies

social court comedy

Ben Jonson: westminster, william camden, on my first son, on my first daughter, every man in his humour, the isle of dogs, gabriel spencer, war of the theatres. George Gascoigne: cardington, bedfordshire, elizabeth breton, trinity college cambridge, gray's inn, supposes, the adventures of master f. j., a hundreth sundrie flowres.

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.

To Celia
Ben Jonson
75%
Compare
A Lover's Lullaby
George Gascoigne
To Celia
Ben Jonson
72% beloved
Compare
Of all the birds
George Gascoigne
The Dreame
Ben Jonson
70% self, desire, sleep
Compare
A Lover's Lullaby
George Gascoigne
That Women Are but Mens Shaddowes
Ben Jonson
68% desire
Compare
A Lover's Lullaby
George Gascoigne
A Hymne to God the Father
Ben Jonson
67%
Compare
A Lover's Lullaby
George Gascoigne

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Ben Jonson: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. George Gascoigne: Tenderness, Peace, Joy.

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