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

Charles Sackville Charles Sackville
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 70% Blended 70%
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 to be the same difference observed between pastorals and elegies as between the life of the country and the court.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Charles Sackville

Charles Sackville

24 January 1643 – 29 January 1706 (~63)
1 live poem · English

Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset, was born on 24 January 1638 and died on 29 January 1706. Although his birth year is occasionally given incorrectly as 1643, the date generally accepted by modern biographical scholarship is 1638. He was one of the most vivid aristocratic personalities of Restoration England: a court wit, lyric poet, naval volunteer, political officeholder, patron of writers, and, in his youth,…

Neighbourhood: Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow

In time

William Walsh
Charles Sackville
1643 1708
They overlapped for 45 years (1662–1706). When William Walsh was born, Charles Sackville was about 19. William Walsh was about 44 when Charles Sackville died.

On the map

About 227 km separate Abberley, Worcestershire, England from Copt Hall, Essex, 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

William Walsh only

Charles Sackville only

From the biographies

restoration social court culture

William Walsh: abberley hall, worcestershire, alexander pope, restoration, augustan age, a dialogue concerning women, letters and poems, william congreve. Charles Sackville: dorset, restoration, social, earl, court, patron, culture, patronage.

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
73% love, life, restoration
Compare
A Ballad by the Lord Dorset when at Sea
Charles Sackville
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
63% love
Compare
A Ballad by the Lord Dorset when at Sea
Charles Sackville

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Walsh: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Charles Sackville: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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