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 Oldys William Oldys

Poet B

Mary Monck Mary Monck
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 64% Blended 64%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Oldys

William Oldys

14 July 1696 – 15 April 1761 (~65)
1 live poem · English

William Oldys, born on 14 July 1696 and dead on 15 April 1761, belongs to that remarkable class of literary figures whose influence exceeds their modern fame. He was a poet only intermittently, an editor often anonymously, a biographer by patient accumulation, a bibliographer before bibliography had fully become a profession, and an antiquary whose chief subject was the survival of the written past. To encounter Oldy…

“We hardly ever find the worth of books till we lose them; and it is then too late to value them.”

Neighbourhood: Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities
Mary Monck

Mary Monck

c. 1677 – 1715 (~38)
1 live poem · English

Mary Monck, born Mary Molesworth about 1677 and dead in 1715, belongs to that important company of early modern women poets whose achievement was more substantial than their later reputation long allowed. She wrote at the meeting point of Restoration wit, Augustan order, religious meditation, private elegy, and the expanding culture of literary translation. Her surviving work is not vast, and its circumstances of pre…

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Irish Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

William Oldys
Mary Monck
1677 1761
They overlapped for 20 years (1696–1715). When William Oldys was born, Mary Monck was about 19. William Oldys was about 19 when Mary Monck died.
William Oldys in history Mary Monck in history Years they were given

On the map

About 464 km separate London, England from Dublin, Ireland. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

William Oldys

Mary Monck

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

life

William Oldys only

oldys insect world existence empathy

Mary Monck only

death love husband religious farewell suffering pain

From the biographies

William Oldys: scarborough miscellany, on a fly drinking out of his cup, thomas watson-wentworth, edward harley, the british muse, the muses library, south sea bubble, eighteenth-century antiquarianism. Mary Monck: anglo-irish society, robert molesworth, letitia coote, george monck, verses wrote on her death-bed at bath, restoration wit, augustan order, literary translation.

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.

On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup
William Oldys
67% life
Compare
Verses Written on her Death-Bed at Bath
Mary Monck

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1699 Publication of 'Centuries of Meditations'
1700 Bartolomeo Cristofori Invents the Piano
1700 Death of George Monck
1700 Death of John Dryden
1700 Publication of The Way of the World
1708 Guru Gobind Singh Dies and the Guru Granth Sahib Becomes Eternal Guru
1712 Invention of the Newcomen Atmospheric Engine for Mine Drainage
1715 Publication of 'Verses Wrote on her Death-Bed at Bath'

William Oldys

1700 William Oldys' Early Education
1720 Imprisonment for Debt
1732 Publication of 'The Life of Mr. William Oldys'
1734 Friendship with Alexander Pope
1753 Appointment as the First Keeper of the British Library
1754 Marriage to Mary Oldys
1755 Publication of 'The British Librarian'
1756 Recognition by the Society of Antiquaries

Mary Monck

1680 Education at Home
1685 Influence of Father on Literary Development
1697 Marriage of Mary Monck
1700 Death of George Monck
1701 Publication of 'On the Death of my Dear Husband'
1705 Involvement in Literary Circles
1714 Move to Bath
1715 Publication of 'Verses Wrote on her Death-Bed at Bath'

Emotional landscapes

William Oldys: Sorrow, Wonder, Peace. Mary Monck: Sorrow, Tenderness, Longing.

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