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

Thomas Paine Thomas Paine

Poet B

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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.

Somewhat related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 53% Blended 53%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine

9 February 1737 – 8 June 1809 (~72)
1 live poem · English

Thomas Paine, born 9 February 1737 and dead on 8 June 1809, was one of the most consequential writers of the revolutionary Atlantic world. He was not primarily a poet in the conventional sense, nor should his occasional verses be allowed to obscure the achievement for which he is remembered: he made political argument into a popular literary force. In pamphlets, newspaper essays, public letters, and philosophical tre…

“The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Enlightenment Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Sensuality, Joy
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

May 1689 – 21 August 1762 (~73)
1 live poem · English

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, born Mary Pierrepont in May 1689 and dead on 21 August 1762, was one of the most formidable and variously gifted figures of the eighteenth century: poet, letter writer, satirist, aristocrat, traveller, political observer, mother, friend, adversary, and advocate for a medical practice that helped alter the history of public health. She lived in an age that praised female modesty while avidly…

“An infallible recipe for making a young man in love with you is to appear to him in a different dress every day.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness

In time

Thomas Paine
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
1689 1809
They overlapped for 26 years (1737–1762). When Thomas Paine was born, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was about 48. Thomas Paine was about 25 when Lady Mary Wortley Montagu died.

On the map

About 136 km separate Thetford, Norfolk, England from Holme Pierrepont, Nottinghamshire, England. Both have ground in England.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Thomas Paine only

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu only

From the biographies

Thomas Paine: thetford, norfolk, common sense, the american crisis, benjamin franklin, mary lambert, elizabeth ollive, deism. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: turkish embassy letters, variolation, smallpox, constantinople, edward wortley montagu, anne wortley, whig politician, evelyn pierrepont.

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.

What Is Love?
Thomas Paine
63%
Compare
A Hymn to the Moon
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Paine: Wonder, Sensuality, Joy. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Longing, Spirituality, Tenderness.

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