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

William Walsh William Walsh

Poet B

William Cartwright William Cartwright
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 73% Poems 84% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Walsh

William Walsh

6 October 1662 – 15 March 1708 (~46)
2 live poems · English

William Walsh was born on 6 October 1662 at Abberley Hall in Worcestershire, into a world in which inherited land, family connection, political loyalty, and literary cultivation could reinforce one another. He died on 15 March 1708, only forty-five years old, having lived as a country gentleman, Member of Parliament, court servant, poet, playwright, critic, and, perhaps most memorably, an early patron and adviser of…

“There ought, perhaps, to be more indulgence shown to things of love and gallantry than any others, because they are generally written when people are young, and intended for ladies who are not supposed to be very old.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
William Cartwright

William Cartwright

1 September 1611 – 29 November 1643 (~32)
3 live poems · English

William Cartwright was born on 1 September 1611 at Northway, near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, and died at Oxford on 29 November 1643. His life was brief even by the precarious standards of the seventeenth century, but it was remarkably crowded: he was a poet, playwright, scholar, university teacher, Anglican clergyman, royalist, and celebrated preacher. To his contemporaries he seemed a figure of unusual promise,…

“For this assertion was Dr Featley brought upon his knees before Wm. Laud A-Bp of Canterbury.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

William Walsh
William Cartwright
1611 1708
Their lives did not overlap. 19 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 31 km separate Abberley, Worcestershire, England from Northway, Gloucestershire, 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

oxford court culture

William Walsh: abberley hall, worcestershire, alexander pope, restoration, augustan age, a dialogue concerning women, letters and poems, william congreve. William Cartwright: northway, tewkesbury, oxford, cirencester, westminster school, christ church, the royal slave, anglican clergyman.

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.

Rivals
William Walsh
79% love, heart
Compare
Falsehood
William Cartwright
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
75% love
Compare
Falsehood
William Cartwright
Rivals
William Walsh
74% suffering
Compare
The Gnat
William Cartwright
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
73%
Compare
The Gnat
William Cartwright
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
68%
Compare
Seal up her Eyes, O sleep
William Cartwright
Rivals
William Walsh
66%
Compare
Seal up her Eyes, O sleep
William Cartwright

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

William Walsh: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. William Cartwright: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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