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

William Alexander William Alexander

Poet B

Thomas Stanley Thomas Stanley
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% Poems 82% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Alexander

William Alexander

c. 1567 – 12 February 1640 (~73)
2 live poems · English

William Alexander, later the first Earl of Stirling, was born about 1567 at Menstrie in Clackmannanshire, near Stirling, Scotland, and died in London on 12 February 1640. He belonged to that distinctive early Stuart class of men for whom poetry, government service, courtly advancement, religious reflection, and colonial ambition were not separate callings but overlapping forms of public life. In his own century he wa…

“I may justly say recreate, since they create new spirits, kindling my fire at those fires which do still burn out of the ashes of ancient authors.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Thomas Stanley

Thomas Stanley

3 September 1625 – 12 April 1678 (~53)
3 live poems · English

Thomas Stanley, born on 3 September 1625 and dead on 12 April 1678, was one of the most cultivated English writers of the seventeenth century: a lyric poet of the Cavalier age, a translator of Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish literature, an editor of Aeschylus, a patron and friend of writers, and the author of the first substantial history of philosophy written in English. His name has never carried the imm…

“He who rests satisfied with the general relation of affairs, not fixing upon some eminent actor in that story, loseth its greatest benefit.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

William Alexander
Thomas Stanley
1567 1678
They overlapped for 16 years (1625–1640). When Thomas Stanley was born, William Alexander was about 58. Thomas Stanley was about 15 when William Alexander died.

On the map

About 525 km separate Menstrie, Stirling, Scotland from Clothall, Hertfordshire, 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

history

William Alexander: menstrie, clackmannanshire, first earl of stirling, james vi and i, charles i, nova scotia schemes, the tragedie of darius, aurora. Thomas Stanley: cavalier age, cumberlow, clothall, dorothy enyon, catherine killigrew, poems by thomas stanley, european literary culture, royalist culture.

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.

Aurora
William Alexander
75% love, beloved
Compare
To Celia pleading want of Merit
Thomas Stanley
Aurora
William Alexander
74% love, beloved
Compare
The Kisse
Thomas Stanley
Aurora
William Alexander
74% love, beloved
Compare
The Relapse
Thomas Stanley
A Short View of the State of Man
William Alexander
72% life, suffering
Compare
The Relapse
Thomas Stanley
A Short View of the State of Man
William Alexander
70%
Compare
The Kisse
Thomas Stanley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Alexander: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Thomas Stanley: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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