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

John Bunyan John Bunyan

Poet B

William Strode William Strode
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 61% Blended 61%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Bunyan

John Bunyan

November 1628 – 31 August 1688 (~60)
1 live poem · English

John Bunyan, baptized on 30 November 1628 and dead on 31 August 1688, rose from the working life of rural Bedfordshire to become one of the most influential English religious writers of all time. Though he is best known as the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a book whose characters and phrases entered the language of generations of readers, Bunyan was also a preacher, controversialist, autobiographer, pastor, poet,…

“Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Renaissance Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Joy
Listen Timeline Affinities
William Strode

William Strode

c. 11 January 1602 – 1645 (~43)
1 live poem · English

William Strode, baptized on 11 January 1602/3 and dead by 1645, belonged to that abundant but still partly shadowed generation of English writers who made the early seventeenth century one of the most inventive periods in the history of English poetry. He was a clergyman, Oxford academic, university orator, court entertainer, dramatist, and lyric poet. In each role he displayed verbal ease, learning, and an appetite…

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Bunyan
William Strode
1602 1688
They overlapped for 18 years (1628–1645). When John Bunyan was born, William Strode was about 26. John Bunyan was about 17 when William Strode died.
John Bunyan in history William Strode in history Years they were given

On the map

About 310 km separate Elstow, Bedfordshire, England from Plymouth, Devon, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

John Bunyan

William Strode

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

divine

John Bunyan only

bunyan life spiritual self humility power pilgrimage

William Strode only

strode snow beauty lady grief nature courtly gentlewoman

From the biographies

religious church

John Bunyan: bedfordshire, elstow, the pilgrim’s progress, grace abounding to the chief of sinners, english civil war, john gifford, tinker, baptism by immersion. William Strode: devonshire gentry, william laud, christ church oxford, the floating island, richard corbet, public orator, caroline manuscript verse, royalist.

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.

He that is down needs fear no fall
John Bunyan
69% divine
Compare
On a Gentlewoman Walking in the Snowe
William Strode

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1628 Death by Violence
1628 Education at St Andrews University
1628 William Harvey Publishes 'De Motu Cordis'
1629 The Italian Plague of 1629
1634 Publication of 'Castara'
1640 Publication of 'Poems' Collection
1642 English Civil War Begins
1644 The Qing capture Beijing after the Ming collapse

John Bunyan

1635 John Bunyan's Education at Local Grammar School
1644 John Bunyan's Military Service
1649 John Bunyan's Marriage to Mary
1660 John Bunyan's First Imprisonment
1666 John Bunyan's Publication of Grace Abounding
1672 John Bunyan's Release from Prison
1685 John Bunyan's Final Years in Bedford
1688 John Bunyan's Death

William Strode

1605 William Strode's Father's Death
1610 Education at Westminster School
1621 Matriculation at Christ Church, Oxford
1633 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of William Strode'
1635 Friendship with John Milton
1643 Marriage to Elizabeth Strode
1644 Death of William Strode's Mother

Emotional landscapes

John Bunyan: Spirituality, Peace, Joy. William Strode: Tenderness, Wonder, Sorrow.

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