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

Thomas Stanley Thomas Stanley

Poet B

Thomas Carew Thomas Carew
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 74% Poems 90% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
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…

“Although some Grecians have challenged to their Nation the Original of Philosophy, yet the more learned of them have acknowledged it derived from the East.”

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

Thomas Carew

1595 – 22 March 1640 (~45)
4 live poems · English

Thomas Carew, born in 1595 and buried on 22 March 1640, occupies a distinctive place in English poetry as one of the most accomplished voices of the Caroline court. He is usually grouped with the Cavalier poets, a loose modern designation for writers associated with the court of Charles I, with royalist culture, and with an ideal of elegance, loyalty, sociability, erotic wit, and cultivated pleasure. Yet Carew is mor…

“Though Ben had barrelled up a great deal of knowledge, yet it seems he had not read the Ethics, which, among other Precepts of Morality, forbid Self-commendation.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sensuality, Tenderness

In time

Thomas Stanley
Thomas Carew
1595 1678
They overlapped for 16 years (1625–1640). When Thomas Stanley was born, Thomas Carew was about 30. Thomas Stanley was about 15 when Thomas Carew died.

On the map

About 68 km separate Clothall, Hertfordshire, England from West Wickham, 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

From the biographies

middle temple

Thomas Stanley: cavalier age, cumberlow, clothall, dorothy enyon, catherine killigrew, poems by thomas stanley, european literary culture, royalist culture. Thomas Carew: caroline court, cavalier poets, ben jonson, to his inconstant mistress, the spring, a rapture, sir dudley carleton, venice.

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 Kisse
Thomas Stanley
80% love, beloved, lovers
Compare
Secrecy in Love Pledged
Thomas Carew
The Relapse
Thomas Stanley
80% love
Compare
To My Inconstant Mistris
Thomas Carew
To Celia pleading want of Merit
Thomas Stanley
79% love, beloved
Compare
Secrecy in Love Pledged
Thomas Carew
The Relapse
Thomas Stanley
77% love, beloved
Compare
Secrecy in Love Pledged
Thomas Carew

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Stanley: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Thomas Carew: Longing, Sensuality, Tenderness.

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