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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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 John Beaumont Sir John Beaumont

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 77% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir John Beaumont

Sir John Beaumont

c. 1583 – 19 April 1627 (~44)
1 live poem · English

Sir John Beaumont, first baronet of Grace Dieu, was born about 1583 and died on 19 April 1627. He belongs to that large and fascinating company of English writers whose work has survived more quietly than their fame deserved. In his own lifetime and for generations afterward, he was known not merely as a poet but as a gentleman of substantial standing: a landowner in Leicestershire, a member of a distinguished legal…

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Despair
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

Sir John Beaumont
William Strode
1583 1645
They overlapped for 26 years (1602–1627). When William Strode was born, Sir John Beaumont was about 19. William Strode was about 25 when Sir John Beaumont died.

On the map

About 324 km separate Grace Dieu, Leicestershire, England from Plymouth, Devon, 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 John Beaumont only

William Strode only

From the biographies

religious

Sir John Beaumont: grace dieu, leicestershire, roman catholic recusant, charles i, francis beaumont, the metamorphosis of tobacco, bosworth field, michael drayton. 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 world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Sir John Beaumont: Sorrow, Tenderness, Despair. William Strode: Tenderness, Wonder, Sorrow.

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