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 Thomas Wyatt Sir Thomas Wyatt

Poet B

John Sheffield John Sheffield
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 74% Poems 86% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir Thomas Wyatt

Sir Thomas Wyatt

c. 1503 – 11 October 1542 (~39)
3 live poems · English

Sir Thomas Wyatt, born about 1503 and dead on 11 October 1542, stands at the beginning of the English Renaissance lyric. He was not the first English poet to write about love, loss, faith, or fortune, but he altered the sound, scale, and inwardness of English poetry. In his hands, verse became a place where private desire could collide with public danger, where a courtier could confess exhaustion without naming its c…

“Never to play upon any man's unhappiness or deformity, for that is inhuman; nor on superiors, for that is saucy and undutiful; nor on holy matters, for that is irreligious.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
John Sheffield

John Sheffield

8 September 1647 – 24 February 1721 (~74)
2 live poems · English

John Sheffield, who became the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, lived from 8 September 1647 to 24 February 1721, though older records occasionally create uncertainty about dates because of the calendar conventions and genealogical habits of the period. He was a nobleman, naval officer, soldier, courtier, politician, patron, critic, playwright, memoirist, and poet. Such a catalogue of roles can make him seem les…

“If he had been as solicitous about improving the faculties of his mind, as he was in the management of his bodily health, that had not failed to have made it famous.”

Neighbourhood: Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow

In time

Sir Thomas Wyatt
John Sheffield
1503 1721
Their lives did not overlap. 105 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 50 km separate Allington Castle, Kent, England from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

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

court

Sir Thomas Wyatt: english renaissance lyric, henry viii, courtier, diplomat, ambassador, whoso list to hunt, anne boleyn, petrarchan sonnet. John Sheffield: first duke of buckingham, naval officer, battle of solebay, order of the garter, essay on satire, an essay upon poetry, restoration england, james duke of york.

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.

I Find No Peace
Sir Thomas Wyatt
80% love, beloved
Compare
On One Who Died Discovering Her Kindness
John Sheffield
I Find No Peace
Sir Thomas Wyatt
77% love
Compare
The Reconcilement
John Sheffield
They Flee From Me
Sir Thomas Wyatt
76%
Compare
The Reconcilement
John Sheffield
Your Looks so Often Cast
Sir Thomas Wyatt
73% love
Compare
The Reconcilement
John Sheffield
Your Looks so Often Cast
Sir Thomas Wyatt
73% beloved, love
Compare
On One Who Died Discovering Her Kindness
John Sheffield

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

Sir Thomas Wyatt: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. John Sheffield: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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