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

Alexander Brome Alexander Brome

Poet B

Richard Lovelace Richard Lovelace
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 76% Poems 82% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Alexander Brome

Alexander Brome

1620 – 30 June 1666 (~46)
2 live poems · English

Alexander Brome, born in 1620 and dead on 30 June 1666, belongs to that lively but unevenly remembered company of seventeenth-century English writers whose poems were made for circulation, sociability, controversy, and song. He was a lawyer by profession, a Royalist by conviction, an editor and occasional dramatist by literary activity, and, above all, a writer of satirical and convivial verse. His name is not common…

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Irony, Tenderness
Richard Lovelace

Richard Lovelace

1617 – 1657 (~40)
10 live poems · English

Richard Lovelace, born on 9 December 1617 and dead by 1657, occupies a distinctive place in English literary history as one of the finest poets associated with the Cavalier tradition. His name is inseparable from two of the most frequently quoted lyrics of the seventeenth century: “I could not love thee, Dear, so much, / Loved I not Honour more” and “Stone walls do not a prison make, / Nor iron bars a cage.” Such mem…

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

In time

Alexander Brome
Richard Lovelace
1617 1666
They overlapped for 38 years (1620–1657). When Alexander Brome was born, Richard Lovelace was about 3. Alexander Brome was about 37 when Richard Lovelace died.

On the map

About 269 km separate Evershot, Dorset, England from Woolwich, Kent, 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

royalist cavalier

Alexander Brome: royalist, london, dorset, the cunning lovers, english anacreon, civil war, satirical verse, wine. Richard Lovelace: cavalier tradition, charterhouse school, gloucester hall, to althea, from prison, to lucasta, going to the warres, sir william lovelace, george goring, royalist.

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 Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
78% love
Compare
To Amarantha: That She Would Dishevell Her Haire
Richard Lovelace
The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
77% love, lover, life
Compare
Valiant Love
Richard Lovelace
The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
77% love, lover
Compare
Lucasta's World
Richard Lovelace
The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
76%
Compare
A Black Patch on Lucasta's Face
Richard Lovelace
The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
75% love
Compare
To Ellinda, Upon His Late Recovery
Richard Lovelace
The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
73% love
Compare
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars
Richard Lovelace

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Alexander Brome: Joy, Irony, Tenderness. Richard Lovelace: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.

Skip to main content