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

Thomas Stanley Thomas Stanley

Poet B

John Sheffield John Sheffield
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% Poems 87% Blended 82%
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…

“History is not unlike Painting: their scope is the same; to represent things absent as if present, and make us acquainted with persons whom we never saw.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
John Sheffield

John Sheffield

8 September 1647 – 24 February 1721 (~74)
2 live poems · English

John Sheffield, who became the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, lived from 8 September 1647 to 24 February 1721, though older records occasionally create uncertainty about dates because of the calendar conventions and genealogical habits of the period. He was a nobleman, naval officer, soldier, courtier, politician, patron, critic, playwright, memoirist, and poet. Such a catalogue of roles can make him seem les…

“I took the liberty to represent to him what a ridiculous story it would make, should we return without fighting.”

Neighbourhood: Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow

In time

Thomas Stanley
John Sheffield
1625 1721
They overlapped for 32 years (1647–1678). When John Sheffield was born, Thomas Stanley was about 22. John Sheffield was about 31 when Thomas Stanley died.

On the map

About 52 km separate Clothall, Hertfordshire, England from London, 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

Thomas Stanley: cavalier age, cumberlow, clothall, dorothy enyon, catherine killigrew, poems by thomas stanley, european literary culture, royalist culture. John Sheffield: first duke of buckingham, naval officer, battle of solebay, order of the garter, essay on satire, an essay upon poetry, restoration england, james duke of york.

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 Relapse
Thomas Stanley
80% love, power
Compare
The Reconcilement
John Sheffield
To Celia pleading want of Merit
Thomas Stanley
78% love, beloved
Compare
On One Who Died Discovering Her Kindness
John Sheffield
The Kisse
Thomas Stanley
77% love, beloved
Compare
On One Who Died Discovering Her Kindness
John Sheffield
The Relapse
Thomas Stanley
76% love, beloved
Compare
On One Who Died Discovering Her Kindness
John Sheffield
To Celia pleading want of Merit
Thomas Stanley
75% love
Compare
The Reconcilement
John Sheffield
The Kisse
Thomas Stanley
73% love
Compare
The Reconcilement
John Sheffield

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Stanley: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. John Sheffield: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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