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

Bernard Barton Bernard Barton

Poet B

George Herbert George Herbert
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 70% Poems 87% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Bernard Barton

Bernard Barton

31 January 1784 – 19 February 1849 (~65)
3 live poems · English

In the quiet market town of Woodbridge, Suffolk, where the River Deben winds its way toward the North Sea, lived one of the 19th century's most prolific yet paradoxical literary figures. Bernard Barton (1784-1849) occupied a unique position in English literature—a devout Quaker who found himself torn between the commercial demands of banking and the irrepressible call of poetry. His life story reads like a gentle reb…

“I find I can always give utterance to my own thoughts and feelings with more readiness, ease, and fluency, on paper than orally.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace
George Herbert

George Herbert

3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633 (~40)
3 live poems · English

George Herbert was born on 3 April 1593 into one of the great border families of Wales, at Montgomery Castle, the fifth son of Richard Herbert and Magdalen Newport Herbert. He died, not yet forty, on 1 March 1633 at Bemerton, near Salisbury, probably of consumption, after only a few years as a country priest. Between those two dates lies one of the most quietly dramatic lives in English literary history: a life that…

“Living well is the best revenge.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness

In time

Bernard Barton
George Herbert
1593 1849
Their lives did not overlap. 151 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 260 km separate Carlisle, Cumberland, England from Montgomery, Wales, United Kingdom. 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

religious

Bernard Barton: woodbridge, carlisle, quaker, charles lamb, lucy jesup, metrical effusions, poems, the convict's return. George Herbert: montgomery castle, magdalen herbert, john donne, the temple, the altar, easter wings, trinity college cambridge, public orator.

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.

All Is Vanity
Bernard Barton
81% beauty, life, world
Compare
Virtue
George Herbert
On True Worship
Bernard Barton
80% divine, spiritual, biblical
Compare
Love (III)
George Herbert
On Some Pictures
Bernard Barton
77% grace
Compare
Love (III)
George Herbert
On Some Pictures
Bernard Barton
75% beauty, life
Compare
Virtue
George Herbert
On True Worship
Bernard Barton
75% spiritual
Compare
The Church-Floore
George Herbert
All Is Vanity
Bernard Barton
74%
Compare
Love (III)
George Herbert

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

Bernard Barton: Spirituality, Wonder, Peace. George Herbert: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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