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

Sir George Etherege Sir George Etherege

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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir George Etherege

Sir George Etherege

c. 1635 – c. 10 May 1692 (~57)
1 live poem · English

Sir George Etherege (c. 1635/1636 – c. May 10, 1692) stands as a pivotal figure in English literary history, the elegant architect of the Restoration comedy of manners. With his razor-sharp wit, keen eye for the absurdities of fashionable society, and graceful prose that captured the sparkling surface of aristocratic life, Etherege helped define an era of theatrical rebirth after the Puritan suppression of the stage.…

“Nature, you know, intended me for an idle fellow, and gave me passions and qualities fit for that blessed calling, but fortune has made a changeling of me, and necessity now forces me to set up for a fop of business.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality
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

Sir George Etherege
Thomas d'Urfey
1635 1723
They overlapped for 40 years (1653–1692). When Thomas d'Urfey was born, Sir George Etherege was about 18. Thomas d'Urfey was about 39 when Sir George Etherege died.

On the map

About 183 km separate Maidenhead, Berkshire, England from Devon, 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

charles ii comedy social restoration

Sir George Etherege: maidenhead, berkshire, charles ii, the comical revenge, she would if she could, the man of mode, sir charles sedley, earl of rochester. 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.

To a Lady, Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her
Sir George Etherege
80% beauty, restoration
Compare
Chloe Divine
Thomas d'Urfey
To a Lady, Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her
Sir George Etherege
75% love
Compare
Love and Satyr
Thomas d'Urfey

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Sir George Etherege: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality. Thomas d'Urfey: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder.

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