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

Aphra Behn Aphra Behn

Poet B

John Dryden John Dryden
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 63% Poems 91% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn

1640 – 16 April 1689 (~49)
7 live poems · English

Aphra Behn, born around 1640 and dead on 16 April 1689, occupies a singular position in English literary history: she was a successful Restoration playwright, a daring poet, an innovator in prose fiction, a political writer, and, most importantly for later generations, a woman who openly made writing her profession. Her precise origins remain uncertain, a fact that has invited both scholarly caution and romantic spec…

“He was a person of a shape and countenance that could give us no idea of a barbarous country.”

Neighbourhood: LGBTQ+ Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
John Dryden

John Dryden

9 August 1631 – 12 May 1700 (~69)
2 live poems · English

In the pantheon of English literature, few figures loom as large or cast as long a shadow as John Dryden. Born on August 9, 1631, in the village of Aldwincle All Saints in Northamptonshire, England, and dying on May 12, 1700, in London, Dryden lived through one of the most turbulent periods in British history. His lifetime spanned the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the Interregnum under Oliver Cromwel…

“Poetry is a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Dramatic Poets, Love Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality

In time

Aphra Behn
John Dryden
1631 1700
They overlapped for 50 years (1640–1689). When Aphra Behn was born, John Dryden was about 9. John Dryden was about 58 when Aphra Behn died.

On the map

About 167 km separate Wye, Kent, England from Aldwincle All Saints, Northamptonshire, England. Both have ground in London.

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

restoration

Aphra Behn: restoration playwright, surinam, oroonoko, the rover, the forc'd marriage, astrea, willmore, charles ii. John Dryden: aldwincle all saints, northamptonshire, heroique stanzas, astraea redux, the wild gallant, the indian queen, the indian emperour, marriage a-la-mode.

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.

While, Iris, I at distance gaze
Aphra Behn
86% love, beloved
Compare
Hidden Flame
John Dryden
While, Iris, I at distance gaze
Aphra Behn
85% love, beloved
Compare
Fair, sweet, and young
John Dryden
Ah! what can mean that eager joy
Aphra Behn
82% love, heart
Compare
Hidden Flame
John Dryden
Love Armed
Aphra Behn
82% love, beloved, suffering
Compare
Hidden Flame
John Dryden
An Ode to Love
Aphra Behn
81% love, power, beauty, restoration
Compare
Fair, sweet, and young
John Dryden

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Aphra Behn: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality. John Dryden: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.

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