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

Thomas, Lord Vaux Thomas, Lord Vaux

Poet B

Sir Thomas Wyatt Sir Thomas Wyatt
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 78% Poems 84% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas, Lord Vaux

Thomas, Lord Vaux

25 April 1509 – c. October 1556 (~47)
2 live poems · English

In the grand tapestry of English Renaissance poetry, few figures occupy such a fascinating yet underexplored position as Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowden. Born into privilege and immersed in the turbulent court life of Henry VIII, Vaux emerged as one of the early Tudor poets whose work would bridge the medieval and modern worlds of English verse. His life, spanning the transformative years from 1509 to 1556,…

“I humbly require you to be good unto me. I have as I perceive a great many more foes than friends, and am like, your goodness reserved, to be trodden under the feet and to be made a slave.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Medieval Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Sir Thomas Wyatt

Sir Thomas Wyatt

c. 1503 – 11 October 1542 (~39)
3 live poems · English

Sir Thomas Wyatt, born about 1503 and dead on 11 October 1542, stands at the beginning of the English Renaissance lyric. He was not the first English poet to write about love, loss, faith, or fortune, but he altered the sound, scale, and inwardness of English poetry. In his hands, verse became a place where private desire could collide with public danger, where a courtier could confess exhaustion without naming its c…

“Never to play upon any man's unhappiness or deformity, for that is inhuman; nor on superiors, for that is saucy and undutiful; nor on holy matters, for that is irreligious.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Thomas, Lord Vaux
Sir Thomas Wyatt
1503 1556
They overlapped for 34 years (1509–1542). When Thomas, Lord Vaux was born, Sir Thomas Wyatt was about 6. Thomas, Lord Vaux was about 33 when Sir Thomas Wyatt died.

On the map

About 140 km separate Harrowden, Northamptonshire, England from Allington Castle, Kent, England. Both have ground in England.

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

henry viii court viii

Thomas, Lord Vaux: northamptonshire, henry viii, catherine parr, cambridge university, cardinal thomas wolsey, francis i, knight of the bath, isle of jersey. Sir Thomas Wyatt: english renaissance lyric, henry viii, courtier, diplomat, ambassador, whoso list to hunt, anne boleyn, petrarchan sonnet.

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.

No Pleasure Without Some Pain
Thomas, Lord Vaux
80%
Compare
I Find No Peace
Sir Thomas Wyatt
The Aged Lover Renounceth Love
Thomas, Lord Vaux
80%
Compare
They Flee From Me
Sir Thomas Wyatt
The Aged Lover Renounceth Love
Thomas, Lord Vaux
77% love, self
Compare
I Find No Peace
Sir Thomas Wyatt
No Pleasure Without Some Pain
Thomas, Lord Vaux
76%
Compare
They Flee From Me
Sir Thomas Wyatt
The Aged Lover Renounceth Love
Thomas, Lord Vaux
73% love, self
Compare
Your Looks so Often Cast
Sir Thomas Wyatt
No Pleasure Without Some Pain
Thomas, Lord Vaux
72% world
Compare
Your Looks so Often Cast
Sir Thomas Wyatt

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas, Lord Vaux: Despair, Sorrow, Longing. Sir Thomas Wyatt: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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