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.

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

Sir Charles Sedley Sir Charles Sedley

Poet B

Thomas Shadwell Thomas Shadwell
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 76% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir Charles Sedley

Sir Charles Sedley

March 1639 – 20 August 1701 (~62)
1 live poem · English

Sir Charles Sedley, fifth baronet, was born in March 1639 and died on 20 August 1701. He belonged to that brilliant and troubling generation of Restoration writers whose lives seem inseparable from the political convulsions, sexual freedoms, theatrical revivals, and moral contradictions of later seventeenth-century England. Poet, playwright, translator, conversational wit, courtier, landowner, and member of Parliamen…

“As the king has made my daughter a countess, the least I can do, in common gratitude, is to assist in making his Majesty's daughter a queen.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Irony, Joy
Listen Timeline Affinities
Thomas Shadwell

Thomas Shadwell

c. 1642 – 19 November 1692 (~50)
2 live poems · English

Thomas Shadwell, born about 1642 and dead on 19 November 1692, was one of the busiest, most contentious, and most revealing writers of England’s Restoration. He wrote poems, prologues, epilogues, political satires, translations, and royal panegyrics, but his chief achievement was in the theatre. For more than two decades he supplied London with comedies whose streets, taverns, gaming rooms, spas, lodgings, laboratori…

“And wit's the noblest frailty of the mind.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Fear, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sir Charles Sedley
Thomas Shadwell
1639 1701
They overlapped for 51 years (1642–1692). When Thomas Shadwell was born, Sir Charles Sedley was about 3. Sir Charles Sedley was about 53 when Thomas Shadwell died.
Sir Charles Sedley in history Thomas Shadwell in history Years they were given

On the map

About 170 km separate Allington Castle, Kent, England from Santon Hall, Norfolk, England. Both have ground in London.

Sir Charles Sedley

Thomas Shadwell

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 restoration

Sir Charles Sedley only

sedley phillis self courtly desire pleasure

Thomas Shadwell only

world beloved nature serene power hell eternal evil pain fiends

From the biographies

restoration social play

Sir Charles Sedley: restoration writers, bellamira, merry gang, lady katherine savage, catherine sedley, pompey the great, the mulberry-garden, antony and cleopatra. Thomas Shadwell: norfolk, santon hall, the sullen lovers, the libertine, the virtuoso, ben jonson, john dryden, whig polemicist.

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.

Phillis is my only Joy
Sir Charles Sedley
76% love
Compare
Bright was the morning cool the Air
Thomas Shadwell
Phillis is my only Joy
Sir Charles Sedley
59% restoration
Compare
Prepare, prepare
Thomas Shadwell

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1642 English Civil War Begins
1644 The Qing capture Beijing after the Ming collapse
1648 Publication of 'Hesperides'
1649 Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland
1649 England Declared a Commonwealth
1649 Trial of Charles I
1650 Publication of 'Silex Scintillans'
1651 Battle of Worcester

Sir Charles Sedley

1655 Education at Wadham College, Oxford
1656 Inheritance of Baronetcy
1668 First Published Work: 'The Mulberry Garden'
1679 Political Career and Role in Parliament
1681 Controversial Incident at the Theatre
1684 Publication of 'The Works of Sir Charles Sedley'
1690 Return to England and Resumption of Literary Work
1701 Final Years and Legacy

Thomas Shadwell

1658 Education at Magdalen Hall, Oxford
1660 Relocation to London
1676 Publication of 'The Virtuoso'
1678 Conflict with John Dryden
1682 Publication of 'The Lancashire Witches'
1688 Publication of 'The Squire of Alsatia'
1689 Appointed Poet Laureate
1692 Death of Thomas Shadwell

Emotional landscapes

Sir Charles Sedley: Tenderness, Irony, Joy. Thomas Shadwell: Despair, Fear, Longing.

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