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

Thomas Stanley Thomas Stanley

Poet B

Stephen Hawes Stephen Hawes
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 76% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Stanley

Thomas Stanley

3 September 1625 – 12 April 1678 (~53)
3 live poems · English

Thomas Stanley, born on 3 September 1625 and dead on 12 April 1678, was one of the most cultivated English writers of the seventeenth century: a lyric poet of the Cavalier age, a translator of Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish literature, an editor of Aeschylus, a patron and friend of writers, and the author of the first substantial history of philosophy written in English. His name has never carried the imm…

“As for the severall moods, which, in musicall compositions, were observed by the Antients, for moving particular passions, there is a remarkable fragment of Damon the Musitian.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Stephen Hawes

Stephen Hawes

c. 1474 – c. 1523 (~49)
1 live poem · English

Stephen Hawes, born about 1474 and probably dead by about 1523, occupies a fascinating and sometimes awkward place in English literary history. He is neither a major medieval master on the scale of Geoffrey Chaucer nor a fully developed Renaissance poet in the manner of later Tudor writers. Yet this apparent in-betweenness is precisely what makes him important. Hawes wrote at a moment when England was emerging from t…

“For though the day be never so long, At last the bells ringeth to evensong.”

Neighbourhood: Medieval Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Thomas Stanley
Stephen Hawes
1474 1678
Their lives did not overlap. 102 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
Thomas Stanley in history Stephen Hawes in history Years they were given

On the map

About 87 km separate Clothall, Hertfordshire, England from Suffolk, England. Both have ground in England.

Thomas Stanley

Stephen Hawes

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

power

Thomas Stanley only

love stanley beloved beauty self celia merit kiss soul lovers union souls

Stephen Hawes only

knight justice truth mercy ethical strength cause

From the biographies

Thomas Stanley: cavalier age, cumberlow, clothall, dorothy enyon, catherine killigrew, poems by thomas stanley, european literary culture, royalist culture. Stephen Hawes: henry vii, the pastime of pleasure, a joyfull meditation to all england, groom of the chamber, wars of the roses, courtly milieu, allegory, graunde amoure.

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 Celia pleading want of Merit
Thomas Stanley
70%
Compare
The True Knight
Stephen Hawes
The Relapse
Thomas Stanley
65% power
Compare
The True Knight
Stephen Hawes
The Kisse
Thomas Stanley
63%
Compare
The True Knight
Stephen Hawes

The world around them

Thomas Stanley

1639 Education at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge
1649 Marriage to Mary Broughton
1650 Friendship with Richard Lovelace
1651 Publication of 'Poems by Thomas Stanley'
1655 Publication of 'The History of Philosophy'
1667 Death of his mother, Mary Hammond
1670 Publication of 'The Life of the Most Excellent Poet, Mr. John Milton'
1676 Publication of 'The Poetical Works of Thomas Stanley'

Stephen Hawes

1490 Education at Oxford University
1502 Appointment as Groom of the Chamber
1509 Publication of The Pastime of Pleasure

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Stanley: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Stephen Hawes: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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