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

Anne Bradstreet Anne Bradstreet

Poet B

Katherine Philips Katherine Philips
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 84% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet

1612 – 16 September 1672 (~60)
5 live poems · English

Anne Bradstreet was born Anne Dudley in 1612 in Northampton, England, into a family unusually well positioned to cultivate both religious seriousness and intellectual ambition. Her precise birth date is uncertain, though she was baptized on March 20, 1612. She entered the world during the reign of James I, in an England defined by political conflict, religious controversy, expanding trade, and the vigorous literary a…

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Colonial American Poets, Devotional Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
Katherine Philips

Katherine Philips

1 January 1632 – 22 June 1664 (~32)
2 live poems · English

Katherine Philips, born Katherine Fowler on 1 January 1632 and dead at only thirty-two on 22 June 1664, achieved a distinction that would have seemed improbable in the unsettled England of her youth: she became a celebrated poet while she was still alive, and she did so as a woman writing in forms and subjects conventionally claimed by men. Known to her readers and friends as “Orinda,” Philips fashioned poems of frie…

“Happiness, I confess, is twofac'd, and one is Opinion; but that Opinion is certainly our own; for it were equally ridiculous and impossible to shape our Actions by others Opinions.”

Neighbourhood: LGBTQ+ Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Spirituality, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Anne Bradstreet
Katherine Philips
1612 1672
They overlapped for 33 years (1632–1664). When Katherine Philips was born, Anne Bradstreet was about 20. Anne Bradstreet was about 52 when Katherine Philips died.
Anne Bradstreet in history Katherine Philips in history Years they were given

On the map

About 321 km separate Northumbria, England from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Anne Bradstreet

Katherine Philips

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 love death faith

Anne Bradstreet only

puritan divine husband heart absence spiritual marriage domestic return separation union children

Katherine Philips only

nature loss epitaph mortality earthly existence philosophical friendship self friends bond world

From the biographies

woman culture women

Anne Bradstreet: northampton, puritan, the tenth muse, simon bradstreet, the prologue, john winthrop, emmanuel college, the four monarchies. Katherine Philips: orinda, society of friendship, friendship's mystery, james philips, cardiganshire, london, puritan culture, civil wars.

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.

Upon my Son Samuel his goeing for England
Anne Bradstreet
79% faith, life
Compare
Epitaph
Katherine Philips
Before the Birth of one of her Children
Anne Bradstreet
78% death, loss, earthly
Compare
Epitaph
Katherine Philips
In my Solitary houres in my dear husband his Absence
Anne Bradstreet
75% faith, life
Compare
Epitaph
Katherine Philips
A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment
Anne Bradstreet
75% life
Compare
Epitaph
Katherine Philips
What God is like to him I serve
Anne Bradstreet
73% life, death
Compare
Epitaph
Katherine Philips
In my Solitary houres in my dear husband his Absence
Anne Bradstreet
73% love
Compare
Friendship’s Mystery, To my Dearest Lucasia
Katherine Philips

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1634 Publication of 'Castara'
1640 Publication of 'Poems' Collection
1642 English Civil War Begins
1644 The Qing capture Beijing after the Ming collapse
1648 Publication of 'Hesperides'
1649 Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland
1649 England Declared a Commonwealth
1649 Trial of Charles I

Anne Bradstreet

1628 Conversion to Puritanism
1628 Marriage of Anne Dudley to Simon Bradstreet
1633 Birth of Anne Bradstreet's First Child
1640 Involvement in the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Social Life
1642 Death of Anne Bradstreet's Father
1650 Publication of 'The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America'
1660 Death of Anne Bradstreet's Mother
1678 Publication of 'Several Poems Compiled with Great Care'

Katherine Philips

1648 Marriage of Katherine Philips
1650 Involvement in Literary Circles
1651 Formation of the Society of Friendship
1651 Friendship with Mary Aubrey
1651 Publication of First Poems
1652 Correspondence with John Milton
1655 Publication of 'Friendship's Mystery'
1664 Publication of 'Poems, By the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips'

Emotional landscapes

Anne Bradstreet: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. Katherine Philips: Tenderness, Spirituality, Wonder.

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