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

William Congreve William Congreve

Poet B

Sir George Etherege Sir George Etherege
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 80% Blended 80%
Swap sides Another related pair
William Congreve

William Congreve

24 January 1670 – 19 January 1729 (~59)
1 live poem · English

William Congreve, born on 24 January 1670 and dead on 19 January 1729, occupies a singular place in English literary history: he was the most polished comic dramatist of the Restoration and one of the crucial artists through whom the exuberant theatre of the late seventeenth century became the poised, urbane literature of the Augustan age. His surviving dramatic career was astonishingly brief. Between 1693 and 1700 h…

“I confess freely to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Satirical Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness
Sir George Etherege

Sir George Etherege

c. 1635 – c. 10 May 1692 (~57)
1 live poem · English

Sir George Etherege (c. 1635/1636 – c. May 10, 1692) stands as a pivotal figure in English literary history, the elegant architect of the Restoration comedy of manners. With his razor-sharp wit, keen eye for the absurdities of fashionable society, and graceful prose that captured the sparkling surface of aristocratic life, Etherege helped define an era of theatrical rebirth after the Puritan suppression of the stage.…

“Nature, you know, intended me for an idle fellow, and gave me passions and qualities fit for that blessed calling, but fortune has made a changeling of me, and necessity now forces me to set up for a fop of business.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality

In time

William Congreve
Sir George Etherege
1635 1729
They overlapped for 23 years (1670–1692). When William Congreve was born, Sir George Etherege was about 35. William Congreve was about 22 when Sir George Etherege died.

On the map

About 280 km separate Bardsey, near Leeds, Yorkshire, England from Maidenhead, Berkshire, 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

William Congreve only

Sir George Etherege only

From the biographies

comedy social play restoration plays

William Congreve: bardsey, youghal, carrickfergus, anglo-irish protestant, jonathan swift, trinity college dublin, the old bachelor, the double-dealer. Sir George Etherege: maidenhead, berkshire, charles ii, the comical revenge, she would if she could, the man of mode, sir charles sedley, earl of rochester.

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.

False though She be
William Congreve
84% love, restoration, world
Compare
To a Lady, Asking Him How Long He Would Love Her
Sir George Etherege

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

William Congreve: Sorrow, Longing, Tenderness. Sir George Etherege: Tenderness, Longing, Sensuality.

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