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

Henry Vaughan Henry Vaughan
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 66% Poems 78% Blended 71%
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
Listen Timeline Affinities
Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan

17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695 (~74)
2 live poems · English

Henry Vaughan, born on 17 April 1621 and buried on 23 April 1695, was one of the most distinctive English-language poets of the seventeenth century: a Welsh country gentleman, Royalist, medical practitioner, translator, religious writer, and visionary poet whose work transformed private devotion into startling images of light, landscape, childhood, death, and eternity. He is usually grouped with the metaphysical poet…

“As men are killed by fighting, the truth is lost in disputing.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

William Walsh
Henry Vaughan
1621 1708
They overlapped for 34 years (1662–1695). When William Walsh was born, Henry Vaughan was about 41. William Walsh was about 33 when Henry Vaughan died.
William Walsh in history Henry Vaughan in history Years they were given

On the map

About 69 km separate Abberley, Worcestershire, England from Llansantffraed, Brecknockshire, Wales. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

William Walsh

Henry Vaughan

Open both on the History Atlas

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

love life

William Walsh only

walsh jealousy rivals suffering restoration heart flame torch jealous desire

Henry Vaughan only

divine grace spiritual self devotional plant fruit idle winter soul follies youth

From the biographies

William Walsh: abberley hall, worcestershire, alexander pope, restoration, augustan age, a dialogue concerning women, letters and poems, william congreve. Henry Vaughan: breconshire, newton-upon-usk, catherine wise, thomas vaughan, george herbert, the temple, silex scintillans, the world.

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
72%
Compare
Idle Verse
Henry Vaughan
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
71% love
Compare
Unprofitableness
Henry Vaughan
Love and Jealousy
William Walsh
70%
Compare
Idle Verse
Henry Vaughan
Rivals
William Walsh
67% love, life
Compare
Unprofitableness
Henry Vaughan

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1666 The Great Fire of London
1667 First Publication of Paradise Lost
1667 Milton's 'Paradise Lost' First Published
1667 Publication of 'Paradise Lost'
1667 Publication of Milton's Paradise Lost
1674 Death of Robert Herrick
1674 Death of Thomas Traherne
1680 Kirch's Comet and Isaac Newton

William Walsh

1678 Education at Wadham College, Oxford
1680 Return to Worcestershire
1686 Publication of 'Poems on Several Occasions'
1698 Elected Member of Parliament for Worcestershire
1702 Political Career Continuation
1705 Friendship with John Dryden
1705 Publication of 'The Works of Mr. William Walsh'
1708 Death of William Walsh

Henry Vaughan

1638 Education at Jesus College, Oxford
1646 Publication of 'Poems, with the tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished'
1647 Death of Younger Brother William
1650 Publication of 'Silex Scintillans'
1651 Publication of 'Olor Iscanus'
1652 Publication of 'The Mount of Olives'
1655 Enlargement of 'Silex Scintillans'
1660 Death of First Wife Catherine

Emotional landscapes

William Walsh: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Henry Vaughan: Despair, Spirituality, Longing.

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