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 Walsh William Walsh

Poet B

Alexander Pope Alexander Pope
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 77% Poems 79% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Walsh

William Walsh

6 October 1662 – 15 March 1708 (~46)
2 live poems · English

William Walsh was born on 6 October 1662 at Abberley Hall in Worcestershire, into a world in which inherited land, family connection, political loyalty, and literary cultivation could reinforce one another. He died on 15 March 1708, only forty-five years old, having lived as a country gentleman, Member of Parliament, court servant, poet, playwright, critic, and, perhaps most memorably, an early patron and adviser of…

“They ought to be smooth, clear, tender, and passionate. The thoughts may be bold, more gay, and more elevated than in pastoral.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

21 May 1688 – 30 May 1744 (~56)
6 live poems · English

Alexander Pope, born on 21 May 1688 and dead on 30 May 1744, was the supreme English poet of the Augustan age and one of the most technically accomplished writers in the language. His verse made the heroic couplet seem at once inevitable, conversational, polished, and inexhaustibly flexible. In his best work, a pair of rhyming pentameter lines can carry an argument, a joke, a moral judgment, a portrait, a burst of in…

“I wish we had the humanity to reflect that even the worst authors might endeavour to please us, and in that endeavour, deserve something at our hands.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Peace, Wonder

In time

William Walsh
Alexander Pope
1662 1744
They overlapped for 21 years (1688–1708). When Alexander Pope was born, William Walsh was about 26. Alexander Pope was about 20 when William Walsh died.

On the map

About 175 km separate Abberley, Worcestershire, England from Plough Court, Lombard Street, London, 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

augustan age social culture

William Walsh: abberley hall, worcestershire, alexander pope, restoration, augustan age, a dialogue concerning women, letters and poems, william congreve. Alexander Pope: augustan age, heroic couplet, an essay on criticism, the rape of the lock, twickenham, john dryden, scriblerus club, spinal tuberculosis.

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.

Rivals
William Walsh
73% love, suffering
Compare
Prayer of St. Francis Xavier
Alexander Pope
Rivals
William Walsh
70%
Compare
The Dying Christian to his Soul
Alexander Pope
Rivals
William Walsh
69%
Compare
Sir, I admit your general rule
Alexander Pope
Rivals
William Walsh
68% life
Compare
Ode on Solitude
Alexander Pope
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
67% love
Compare
Prayer of St. Francis Xavier
Alexander Pope
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
66%
Compare
The Dying Christian to his Soul
Alexander Pope

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Walsh: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Alexander Pope: Joy, Peace, Wonder.

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