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

Sir George Etherege Sir George Etherege

Poet B

Sir Charles Sedley Sir Charles Sedley
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% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir George Etherege

Sir George Etherege

c. 1635 – c. 10 May 1692 (~57)
1 live poem · English

Sir George Etherege (c. 1635/1636 – c. May 10, 1692) stands as a pivotal figure in English literary history, the elegant architect of the Restoration comedy of manners. With his razor-sharp wit, keen eye for the absurdities of fashionable society, and graceful prose that captured the sparkling surface of aristocratic life, Etherege helped define an era of theatrical rebirth after the Puritan suppression of the stage.…

“I must confess I am a fop in my heart; ill customs influence my very senses, and I have been so used to affectation that without the help of the air of the court what is natural cannot touch me.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality
Sir Charles Sedley

Sir Charles Sedley

March 1639 – 20 August 1701 (~62)
1 live poem · English

Sir Charles Sedley, fifth baronet, was born in March 1639 and died on 20 August 1701. He belonged to that brilliant and troubling generation of Restoration writers whose lives seem inseparable from the political convulsions, sexual freedoms, theatrical revivals, and moral contradictions of later seventeenth-century England. Poet, playwright, translator, conversational wit, courtier, landowner, and member of Parliamen…

“As the king has made my daughter a countess, the least I can do, in common gratitude, is to assist in making his Majesty's daughter a queen.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Irony, Joy

In time

Sir George Etherege
Sir Charles Sedley
1635 1701
They overlapped for 54 years (1639–1692). When Sir Charles Sedley was born, Sir George Etherege was about 4. Sir Charles Sedley was about 53 when Sir George Etherege died.

On the map

About 125 km separate Maidenhead, Berkshire, England from Allington Castle, Kent, 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

Sir George Etherege only

Sir Charles Sedley only

From the biographies

merry gang social restoration play court

Sir George Etherege: maidenhead, berkshire, charles ii, the comical revenge, she would if she could, the man of mode, sir charles sedley, earl of rochester. Sir Charles Sedley: restoration writers, bellamira, merry gang, lady katherine savage, catherine sedley, pompey the great, the mulberry-garden, antony and cleopatra.

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 a Lady, Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her
Sir George Etherege
83% love, restoration
Compare
Phillis is my only Joy
Sir Charles Sedley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Sir George Etherege: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality. Sir Charles Sedley: Tenderness, Irony, Joy.

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