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

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson

Poet B

Mary Monck Mary Monck
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 57% Blended 57%
Swap sides Another related pair
Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784 (~75)
2 live poems · English

Samuel Johnson stands as one of the most imposing and fascinating figures in the history of English literature, a man whose physical bulk was matched only by the magnitude of his intellectual achievements and the breadth of his influence on the language itself. Born on September 18, 1709, in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and dying in London on December 13, 1784, Johnson's seventy-five years encompassed a journey from pro…

“Where necessity ends, curiosity begins; and no sooner are we supplied with every thing that nature can demand, than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Mary Monck

Mary Monck

c. 1677 – 1715 (~38)
1 live poem · English

Mary Monck, born Mary Molesworth about 1677 and dead in 1715, belongs to that important company of early modern women poets whose achievement was more substantial than their later reputation long allowed. She wrote at the meeting point of Restoration wit, Augustan order, religious meditation, private elegy, and the expanding culture of literary translation. Her surviving work is not vast, and its circumstances of pre…

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Irish Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Samuel Johnson
Mary Monck
1677 1784
They overlapped for 7 years (1709–1715). When Samuel Johnson was born, Mary Monck was about 32. Samuel Johnson was about 6 when Mary Monck died.
Samuel Johnson in history Mary Monck in history Years they were given

On the map

About 306 km separate Lichfield, Staffordshire, England from Dublin, Ireland. Both have ground in England.

Samuel Johnson

Mary Monck

Open both on the History Atlas

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

life

Samuel Johnson only

social woman elegy women lamb wealth money heir property

Mary Monck only

death love husband religious farewell suffering pain

From the biographies

Samuel Johnson: lichfield, staffordshire, queen anne, elizabeth porter, the vanity of human wishes, a dictionary of the english language, the rambler, the idler. Mary Monck: anglo-irish society, robert molesworth, letitia coote, george monck, verses wrote on her death-bed at bath, restoration wit, augustan order, literary translation.

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.

An Extempore Elegy
Samuel Johnson
69% life
Compare
Verses Written on her Death-Bed at Bath
Mary Monck
A Short Song of Congratulation
Samuel Johnson
63%
Compare
Verses Written on her Death-Bed at Bath
Mary Monck

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1709 Abraham Darby Uses Coke for Iron Smelting
1709 The Great Frost of Europe
1710 Congreve's Involvement in the Literary Scene
1710 The Statute of Anne Establishes Copyright Law
1711 Pope publishes An Essay on Criticism
1711 The Spectator begins publication
1712 Invention of the Newcomen Atmospheric Engine for Mine Drainage
1715 Publication of 'Verses Wrote on her Death-Bed at Bath'

Samuel Johnson

1715 Education at Lichfield Grammar School
1738 Publication of 'London: A Poem'
1750 Publication of 'The Rambler'
1752 Death of Tetty Johnson
1758 Publication of 'The Idler'
1759 Publication of 'Rasselas'
1762 Pension from the Crown
1763 Friendship with James Boswell

Mary Monck

1680 Education at Home
1685 Influence of Father on Literary Development
1697 Marriage of Mary Monck
1700 Death of George Monck
1701 Publication of 'On the Death of my Dear Husband'
1705 Involvement in Literary Circles
1714 Move to Bath
1715 Publication of 'Verses Wrote on her Death-Bed at Bath'

Emotional landscapes

Samuel Johnson: Irony, Sorrow, Despair. Mary Monck: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing.

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