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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Henry Vaughan Henry Vaughan

Poet B

George Herbert George Herbert
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 77% Poems 87% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Henry Vaughan

Henry Vaughan

17 April 1621 – 23 April 1695 (~74)
2 live poems · English

Henry Vaughan, born on 17 April 1621 and buried on 23 April 1695, was one of the most distinctive English-language poets of the seventeenth century: a Welsh country gentleman, Royalist, medical practitioner, translator, religious writer, and visionary poet whose work transformed private devotion into startling images of light, landscape, childhood, death, and eternity. He is usually grouped with the metaphysical poet…

“Holy writing must strive (by all means) for perfection and true holiness, that a door may be opened to him in heaven.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Spirituality, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
George Herbert

George Herbert

3 April 1593 – 1 March 1633 (~40)
3 live poems · English

George Herbert was born on 3 April 1593 into one of the great border families of Wales, at Montgomery Castle, the fifth son of Richard Herbert and Magdalen Newport Herbert. He died, not yet forty, on 1 March 1633 at Bemerton, near Salisbury, probably of consumption, after only a few years as a country priest. Between those two dates lies one of the most quietly dramatic lives in English literary history: a life that…

“Good words are worth much, and cost little.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Henry Vaughan
George Herbert
1593 1695
They overlapped for 13 years (1621–1633). When Henry Vaughan was born, George Herbert was about 28. Henry Vaughan was about 12 when George Herbert died.
Henry Vaughan in history George Herbert in history Years they were given

On the map

About 76 km separate Llansantffraed, Brecknockshire, Wales from Montgomery, Wales, United Kingdom. Both have ground in Cymru / Wales.

Henry Vaughan

George Herbert

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

divine grace spiritual life self love soul world

Henry Vaughan only

devotional plant fruit idle winter follies youth

George Herbert only

death celebrated temple unworthiness biblical rose spring virtue

From the biographies

the temple religious devotional

Henry Vaughan: breconshire, newton-upon-usk, catherine wise, thomas vaughan, george herbert, the temple, silex scintillans, the world. George Herbert: montgomery castle, magdalen herbert, john donne, the temple, the altar, easter wings, trinity college cambridge, public orator.

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.

Unprofitableness
Henry Vaughan
81% life, spiritual
Compare
Virtue
George Herbert
Idle Verse
Henry Vaughan
79% spiritual, soul, world
Compare
Virtue
George Herbert
Unprofitableness
Henry Vaughan
77% self, divine, grace, spiritual
Compare
Love (III)
George Herbert
Unprofitableness
Henry Vaughan
77% self, spiritual, love
Compare
The Church-Floore
George Herbert
Idle Verse
Henry Vaughan
74% spiritual, divine, soul, grace
Compare
Love (III)
George Herbert
Idle Verse
Henry Vaughan
72% spiritual
Compare
The Church-Floore
George Herbert

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1621 Appointment as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral
1622 Publication of 'The Songs of Thomas Tomkins'
1623 Enrollment at Christ Church, Oxford
1623 Publication of 'The First Folio' of William Shakespeare (1623)
1623 Publication of 'The Flowers of Sion'
1623 Publication of The Duchess of Malfi
1623 Shakespeare's First Folio Publication
1623 The Miraculous Preservation of the First Folio

Henry Vaughan

1638 Education at Jesus College, Oxford
1646 Publication of 'Poems, with the tenth Satyre of Juvenal Englished'
1647 Death of Younger Brother William
1650 Publication of 'Silex Scintillans'
1651 Publication of 'Olor Iscanus'
1652 Publication of 'The Mount of Olives'
1655 Enlargement of 'Silex Scintillans'
1660 Death of First Wife Catherine

George Herbert

1604 George Herbert's Early Education at Westminster School
1609 George Herbert Enters Trinity College, Cambridge
1619 George Herbert Becomes Public Orator at Cambridge
1620 George Herbert's Friendship with John Donne
1624 George Herbert's Ordination as Deacon
1630 George Herbert Becomes Rector of Fugglestone St Peter
1633 George Herbert's Final Illness
1633 George Herbert's Publication of 'A Priest to the Temple'

Emotional landscapes

Henry Vaughan: Despair, Spirituality, Longing. George Herbert: Spirituality, Peace, Tenderness.

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