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 Tomkins Thomas Tomkins

Poet B

John Oldham John Oldham
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 64% Poems 75% Blended 69%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Tomkins

Thomas Tomkins

1572 – 9 June 1656 (~84)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight of the English Renaissance, as the sun dipped behind the hills of a vanishing golden age, there stood a solitary figure whose music shimmered with the last glow of that era’s brilliance — Thomas Tomkins, composer, organist, and quiet poet of sound. Born in 1572, in the cathedral town of St. David’s, Wales, and passing into silence in 1656, in the shadowed aftermath of civil war and Puritan upheaval, T…

“The Brife in to Fowre, the prick Brife into Sixe, The longe into Eight minums, still driving od”

Neighbourhood: Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Joy
John Oldham

John Oldham

9 August 1653 – 9 December 1683 (~30)
2 live poems · English

There is something peculiarly poignant about a poet who burns with such fierce satirical energy, who seems to embody the very spirit of angry, impatient youth, and who then dies at thirty years old — as if the intensity of the flame had consumed the wick. John Oldham lived only three decades, yet in that brief span he produced a body of work remarkable for its ferocity, its metrical daring, and its willingness to dra…

“Lord of myself, accountable to none, but to my conscience, and my God alone.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Restoration Poets, Satirical Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality

In time

Thomas Tomkins
John Oldham
1572 1683
They overlapped for 4 years (1653–1656). When John Oldham was born, Thomas Tomkins was about 81. John Oldham was about 3 when Thomas Tomkins died.

On the map

About 216 km separate St. David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales from Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire, England. Both have ground in England.

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 Tomkins: st. david's, wales, william byrd, gloucester cathedral, chapel royal, o sing unto the lord a new song, the triumphs of oriana, a sad pavan for these distracted times. John Oldham: shipton moyne, john dryden, satyrs upon the jesuits, restoration period, tetbury grammar school, st edmund hall, oxford, popish plot.

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.

Weep no more, thou sorry boy
Thomas Tomkins
69% love
Compare
A Rant to his Mistress
John Oldham
Weep no more, thou sorry boy
Thomas Tomkins
67%
Compare
A Quiet Soul
John Oldham
Too much I once lamented
Thomas Tomkins
67%
Compare
A Quiet Soul
John Oldham
Too much I once lamented
Thomas Tomkins
65% love
Compare
A Rant to his Mistress
John Oldham

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Tomkins: Sorrow, Tenderness, Joy. John Oldham: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality.

Skip to main content