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

John Milton John Milton

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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 74% Poems 83% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Milton

John Milton

9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674 (~66)
2 live poems · English

John Milton, born in London on 9 December 1608 and dead there on 8 November 1674, lived through one of the most violent and intellectually fertile passages in English history. He was a poet, polemicist, scholar, civil servant, religious controversialist, educator, translator, and theorist of political liberty. To many readers he is above all the author of Paradise Lost, the English epic that retells the rebellion of…

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Hymn Writers, Metaphysical Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Wonder
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…

“The mind of man is a little world, and hath in it all the variety and forms of the world.”

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

In time

John Milton
Andrew Marvell
1608 1678
They overlapped for 54 years (1621–1674). When Andrew Marvell was born, John Milton was about 13. Andrew Marvell was about 53 when John Milton died.

On the map

About 249 km separate London, England from Winestead-in-Holderness, Yorkshire, England. Both have ground in London.

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

religious

John Milton: london, paradise lost, areopagitica, comus, lycidas, christ's college, puritan, galileo galilei. 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.

Song of May Morning
John Milton
75% world
Compare
A Drop of Dew
Andrew Marvell
Song of May Morning
John Milton
74%
Compare
Music's Empire
Andrew Marvell
Song of May Morning
John Milton
73% beauty
Compare
The Fair Singer
Andrew Marvell
Song of May Morning
John Milton
73% desire
Compare
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
On His Blindness
John Milton
70%
Compare
To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Milton: Peace, Spirituality, Wonder. Andrew Marvell: Longing, Sorrow, Wonder.

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