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

Jasper Mayne Jasper Mayne

Poet B

Andrew Marvell Andrew Marvell
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 75% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Jasper Mayne

Jasper Mayne

23 November 1604 – 6 December 1672 (~68)
1 live poem · English

Jasper Mayne, born on 23 November 1604 and dead on 6 December 1672, lived at the intersection of several worlds that seventeenth-century England often tried to keep apart: the theatre and the pulpit, academic wit and ecclesiastical authority, royalist loyalty and the practical necessities of survival under a hostile regime. He was never a poet of the first rank, nor a dramatist whose name became inseparable from an a…

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

Andrew Marvell

31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678 (~57)
8 live poems · English

Andrew Marvell was born on March 31, 1621, in the small village of Winestead in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the son of the Reverend Andrew Marvell and Anne Pease Marvell. The family soon moved to the bustling port town of Hull when the elder Marvell was appointed lecturer at Holy Trinity Church and master of the Charterhouse, a charitable institution. Young Andrew grew up amid the sounds of the sea and the…

“I found nevertheless after the writing of that Book, that natural relenting of mind which most men feel after they have done an harsh, though necessary action.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Political Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder

In time

Jasper Mayne
Andrew Marvell
1604 1678
They overlapped for 52 years (1621–1672). When Andrew Marvell was born, Jasper Mayne was about 17. Andrew Marvell was about 51 when Jasper Mayne died.

On the map

About 427 km separate Hatherleigh, Devon, England from Winestead-in-Holderness, Yorkshire, 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

restoration religious

Jasper Mayne: hatherleigh, westminster school, christ church oxford, brian duppa, the city match, the amorous war, cavalier poetry, caroline culture. Andrew Marvell: winestead, hull, trinity college, mary fairfax, upon appleton house, the garden, to his coy mistress, the mower's song.

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.

Time
Jasper Mayne
86% love
Compare
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
Time
Jasper Mayne
78% love, beauty
Compare
The Fair Singer
Andrew Marvell
Time
Jasper Mayne
78%
Compare
Music's Empire
Andrew Marvell
Time
Jasper Mayne
75% love
Compare
The Unfortunate Lover
Andrew Marvell
Time
Jasper Mayne
74% love
Compare
The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn
Andrew Marvell
Time
Jasper Mayne
74%
Compare
A Drop of Dew
Andrew Marvell

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Jasper Mayne: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Andrew Marvell: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

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