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

Sir George Etherege Sir George Etherege

Poet B

Ben Jonson Ben Jonson
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 74% Blended 74%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir George Etherege

Sir George Etherege

c. 1635 – c. 10 May 1692 (~57)
1 live poem · English

Sir George Etherege (c. 1635/1636 – c. May 10, 1692) stands as a pivotal figure in English literary history, the elegant architect of the Restoration comedy of manners. With his razor-sharp wit, keen eye for the absurdities of fashionable society, and graceful prose that captured the sparkling surface of aristocratic life, Etherege helped define an era of theatrical rebirth after the Puritan suppression of the stage.…

“I must confess I am a fop in my heart; ill customs influence my very senses, and I have been so used to affectation that without the help of the air of the court what is natural cannot touch me.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality
Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

c. 11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637 (~65)
5 live poems · English

Ben Jonson, baptized on 11 June 1572 and probably born on or very near that date, entered the world in Westminster at a moment when London’s theatrical culture was beginning to assume the force and richness that would make the English Renaissance famous. He died on 6 August 1637, having become, in the course of sixty-five turbulent years, England’s most formidable classical dramatist, one of its finest lyric poets, a…

“By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality

In time

Sir George Etherege
Ben Jonson
1572 1692
They overlapped for 3 years (1635–1637). When Sir George Etherege was born, Ben Jonson was about 63. Sir George Etherege was about 2 when Ben Jonson died.

On the map

About 81 km separate Maidenhead, Berkshire, England from Westminster, 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

comedy social play court london

Sir George Etherege: maidenhead, berkshire, charles ii, the comical revenge, she would if she could, the man of mode, sir charles sedley, earl of rochester. Ben Jonson: westminster, william camden, on my first son, on my first daughter, every man in his humour, the isle of dogs, gabriel spencer, war of the theatres.

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 a Lady, Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her
Sir George Etherege
79% love
Compare
To Celia
Ben Jonson
To a Lady, Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her
Sir George Etherege
66% love
Compare
The Dreame
Ben Jonson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Sir George Etherege: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality. Ben Jonson: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.

Skip to main content