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

Henry Carey Henry Carey

Poet B

Thomas d'Urfey Thomas d'Urfey
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 73% Poems 83% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Henry Carey

Henry Carey

c. 26 August 1687 – 5 October 1743 (~56)
2 live poems · English

Henry Carey, poet, songwriter, composer, dramatist, performer, and irrepressible satirist, was born about 26 August 1687 and died on 5 October 1743. He belonged to that unusually fertile and unruly generation of English writers who worked in the crowded space between coffeehouse wit, commercial theater, political controversy, popular song, and the new culture of print. His name is not as immediately familiar as those…

“The real occasion was this: a shoemaker's 'prentice making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, the flying-chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields.”

Neighbourhood: Folk & Ballad Poets, Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Satirical Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Sensuality, Tenderness
Thomas d'Urfey

Thomas d'Urfey

c. 1653 – 26 February 1723 (~70)
2 live poems · English

Thomas d’Urfey, born about 1653 and dead on 26 February 1723, was one of the most tireless entertainers in English literary history: a playwright, lyricist, ballad-writer, compiler, performer, political satirist, and convivial public personality whose career stretched from the high Restoration of Charles II to the early Hanoverian age. He has seldom occupied the first rank in conventional histories of English literat…

“The town may da-da-damn me as a poet, but they sing my songs for all that.”

Neighbourhood: Children's Verse, Light Verse Poets, Poet-Musicians, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder

In time

Henry Carey
Thomas d'Urfey
1653 1743
They overlapped for 37 years (1687–1723). When Henry Carey was born, Thomas d'Urfey was about 34. Henry Carey was about 36 when Thomas d'Urfey died.

On the map

About 394 km separate Yorkshire, England from Devon, England. Both have ground in London.

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

political satire songs

Henry Carey: sally in our alley, namby-pamby, george savile, drury lane, georgian britain, political satire, robert harley, music composition. Thomas d'Urfey: exeter, charles ii, james butler, the siege of memphis, madam fickle, a fond husband, squire oldsapp, the comical history of don quixote.

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.

A Drinking-Song
Henry Carey
72%
Compare
Love and Satyr
Thomas d'Urfey
Sally in our Alley
Henry Carey
71%
Compare
Chloe Divine
Thomas d'Urfey
Sally in our Alley
Henry Carey
71% love, life
Compare
Love and Satyr
Thomas d'Urfey
A Drinking-Song
Henry Carey
67% divine
Compare
Chloe Divine
Thomas d'Urfey

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Henry Carey: Joy, Sensuality, Tenderness. Thomas d'Urfey: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder.

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