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

Alexander Brome Alexander Brome

Poet B

William Strode William Strode
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% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alexander Brome

Alexander Brome

1620 – 30 June 1666 (~46)
2 live poems · English

Alexander Brome, born in 1620 and dead on 30 June 1666, belongs to that lively but unevenly remembered company of seventeenth-century English writers whose poems were made for circulation, sociability, controversy, and song. He was a lawyer by profession, a Royalist by conviction, an editor and occasional dramatist by literary activity, and, above all, a writer of satirical and convivial verse. His name is not common…

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Irony, Tenderness
William Strode

William Strode

c. 11 January 1602 – 1645 (~43)
1 live poem · English

William Strode, baptized on 11 January 1602/3 and dead by 1645, belonged to that abundant but still partly shadowed generation of English writers who made the early seventeenth century one of the most inventive periods in the history of English poetry. He was a clergyman, Oxford academic, university orator, court entertainer, dramatist, and lyric poet. In each role he displayed verbal ease, learning, and an appetite…

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Sorrow

In time

Alexander Brome
William Strode
1602 1666
They overlapped for 26 years (1620–1645). When Alexander Brome was born, William Strode was about 18. Alexander Brome was about 25 when William Strode died.

On the map

About 112 km separate Evershot, Dorset, England from Plymouth, Devon, 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.

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

From the biographies

royalist civil war culture

Alexander Brome: royalist, london, dorset, the cunning lovers, english anacreon, civil war, satirical verse, wine. William Strode: devonshire gentry, william laud, christ church oxford, the floating island, richard corbet, public orator, caroline manuscript verse, royalist.

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.

The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
70%
Compare
On a Gentlewoman Walking in the Snowe
William Strode
A Catch
Alexander Brome
63%
Compare
On a Gentlewoman Walking in the Snowe
William Strode

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alexander Brome: Joy, Irony, Tenderness. William Strode: Tenderness, Wonder, Sorrow.

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