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

Sir John Beaumont Sir John Beaumont

Poet B

Henry King Henry King
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 78% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir John Beaumont

Sir John Beaumont

c. 1583 – 19 April 1627 (~44)
1 live poem · English

Sir John Beaumont, first baronet of Grace Dieu, was born about 1583 and died on 19 April 1627. He belongs to that large and fascinating company of English writers whose work has survived more quietly than their fame deserved. In his own lifetime and for generations afterward, he was known not merely as a poet but as a gentleman of substantial standing: a landowner in Leicestershire, a member of a distinguished legal…

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Despair
Henry King

Henry King

16 January 1592 – 30 September 1669 (~77)
1 live poem · English

Henry King, born on 16 January 1592 and dead on 30 September 1669, lived a life shaped by inherited ecclesiastical ambition, private bereavement, literary friendship, civil conflict, and religious restoration. He is remembered chiefly as the author of “The Exequy,” one of the most moving elegies in seventeenth-century English poetry, but that single poem can obscure the breadth of his career. King was a clergyman, ro…

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair

In time

Sir John Beaumont
Henry King
1583 1669
They overlapped for 36 years (1592–1627). When Henry King was born, Sir John Beaumont was about 9. Henry King was about 35 when Sir John Beaumont died.

On the map

About 116 km separate Grace Dieu, Leicestershire, England from Worminghall, Buckinghamshire, 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.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

Sir John Beaumont only

Henry King only

From the biographies

religious

Sir John Beaumont: grace dieu, leicestershire, roman catholic recusant, charles i, francis beaumont, the metamorphosis of tobacco, bosworth field, michael drayton. Henry King: worminghall, buckinghamshire, the exequy, john king, anne berkeley, english civil war, royal chaplain, archdeacon of colchester.

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.

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Sir John Beaumont: Sorrow, Tenderness, Despair. Henry King: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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