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

Joseph Addison Joseph Addison

Poet B

Edward Taylor Edward Taylor
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 65% Blended 65%
Swap sides Another related pair
Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719 (~47)
2 live poems · English

Joseph Addison, born on 1 May 1672 at Milston in Wiltshire and dead on 17 June 1719 at Holland House in Kensington, was one of the central makers of modern English prose. Poet, critic, dramatist, journalist, civil servant, parliamentarian, and Whig public intellectual, he achieved an influence out of proportion to the comparatively small bulk of his writing. His greatest achievement was not a single poem or play, tho…

“The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their lives which infallibly destroy them.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Hymn Writers, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder
Edward Taylor

Edward Taylor

c. 1642 – 24 June 1729 (~87)
1 live poem · English

Edward Taylor was born about 1642, probably in Sketchley, Leicestershire, England, into a world in which political upheaval and religious conviction entered ordinary life with unusual force. He died on 24 June 1729 in Westfield, Massachusetts, after nearly six decades as that frontier town’s minister, physician, teacher, community counselor, and private poet. During his lifetime he was known chiefly as a learned and…

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Colonial American Poets, Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Joseph Addison
Edward Taylor
1642 1729
They overlapped for 48 years (1672–1719). When Joseph Addison was born, Edward Taylor was about 30. Edward Taylor was about 77 when Joseph Addison died.

On the map

About 149 km separate Milston, Wiltshire, England from Sketchley, Leicestershire, 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.

Shared

From the biographies

Joseph Addison: milston, lichfield, cato, the tatler, the spectator, richard steele, whig public intellectual, glorious revolution. Edward Taylor: sketchley, leicestershire, westfield, harvard college, elizabeth fitch, james fitch, the lay-man’s lamentation, upon wedlock, and death of children.

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.

Hymn
Joseph Addison
75% divine
Compare
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
Edward Taylor
Hope
Joseph Addison
68% world
Compare
Upon a Spider Catching a Fly
Edward Taylor

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Joseph Addison: Spirituality, Peace, Wonder. Edward Taylor: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair.

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