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

William Cartwright William Cartwright

Poet B

Edmund Waller Edmund Waller
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 75% Poems 87% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Cartwright

William Cartwright

1 September 1611 – 29 November 1643 (~32)
3 live poems · English

William Cartwright was born on 1 September 1611 at Northway, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, and died at Oxford on 29 November 1643. His life was brief even by the precarious standards of the seventeenth century, but it was remarkably crowded: he was a poet, playwright, scholar, university teacher, Anglican clergyman, royalist, and celebrated preacher. To his contemporaries he seemed a figure of unusual promise,…

“For this assertion was Dr Featley brought upon his knees before Wm. Laud A-Bp of Canterbury.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller

3 March 1606 – 21 October 1687 (~81)
4 live poems · English

Edmund Waller was born on 3 March 1606 at Coleshill, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and died on 21 October 1687 at Beaconsfield. His long life carried him through the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the Restoration of Charles II, and the opening years of James II’s rule. Few English poets lived so visibly amid such violent political reversals, and fewer still man…

“The King governs by Law. Let us look back to the evils we had, in order to prevent more. We give public money, and must see that it goes to public use.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Peace

In time

William Cartwright
Edmund Waller
1606 1687
They overlapped for 33 years (1611–1643). When William Cartwright was born, Edmund Waller was about 5. Edmund Waller was about 37 when William Cartwright died.

On the map

About 109 km separate Northway, Gloucestershire, England from Coleshill, Buckinghamshire, 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

William Cartwright: northway, tewkesbury, oxford, cirencester, westminster school, christ church, the royal slave, anglican clergyman. Edmund Waller: coleshill, beaconsfield, james i, charles i, civil wars, commonwealth, restoration, lady dorothy sidney.

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.

Falsehood
William Cartwright
75%
Compare
Go, Lovely Rose
Edmund Waller
The Gnat
William Cartwright
74% death
Compare
Fade, Flow'rs!
Edmund Waller
Seal up her Eyes, O sleep
William Cartwright
73%
Compare
Fade, Flow'rs!
Edmund Waller
The Gnat
William Cartwright
73% beloved
Compare
On a Girdle
Edmund Waller
Falsehood
William Cartwright
73%
Compare
Fade, Flow'rs!
Edmund Waller
The Gnat
William Cartwright
73% woman
Compare
Go, Lovely Rose
Edmund Waller

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Cartwright: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Edmund Waller: Longing, Tenderness, Peace.

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