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 Sheffield John Sheffield

Poet B

Elizabeth Thomas Elizabeth Thomas
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% Poems 80% Blended 69%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Sheffield

John Sheffield

8 September 1647 – 24 February 1721 (~74)
2 live poems · English

John Sheffield, who became the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, lived from 8 September 1647 to 24 February 1721, though older records occasionally create uncertainty about dates because of the calendar conventions and genealogical habits of the period. He was a nobleman, naval officer, soldier, courtier, politician, patron, critic, playwright, memoirist, and poet. Such a catalogue of roles can make him seem les…

“I took the liberty to represent to him what a ridiculous story it would make, should we return without fighting.”

Neighbourhood: Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
Elizabeth Thomas

Elizabeth Thomas

1675 – 1731 (~56)
2 live poems · English

Elizabeth Thomas, who wrote under the name “Corinna,” was born in 1675 and died in 1731. She belongs to that large and fascinating company of early eighteenth-century women writers whose lives survive only in fragments: poems, letters, dedications, hostile anecdotes, printers’ advertisements, and the recollections of men whose literary fame later eclipsed theirs. Yet Thomas was far more than a minor satellite of Alex…

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Anger

In time

John Sheffield
Elizabeth Thomas
1647 1731
They overlapped for 47 years (1675–1721). When Elizabeth Thomas was born, John Sheffield was about 28. Elizabeth Thomas was about 46 when John Sheffield died.

On the map

About 188 km separate London, England from Skenfrith, Monmouthshire, Wales. 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

John Sheffield: first duke of buckingham, naval officer, battle of solebay, order of the garter, essay on satire, an essay upon poetry, restoration england, james duke of york. Elizabeth Thomas: skenfrith, monmouthshire, corinna, richard gwinnett, pylades, alexander pope, miscellany poems on several subjects, eighteenth-century women writers.

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.

On One Who Died Discovering Her Kindness
John Sheffield
78% love
Compare
The Forsaken Wife
Elizabeth Thomas
The Reconcilement
John Sheffield
71% love
Compare
The Forsaken Wife
Elizabeth Thomas
The Reconcilement
John Sheffield
63%
Compare
The Execration
Elizabeth Thomas

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Sheffield: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Elizabeth Thomas: Despair, Sorrow, Anger.

Skip to main content