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

Charles Sackville Charles Sackville

Poet B

Alexander Brome Alexander Brome
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% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charles Sackville

Charles Sackville

24 January 1643 – 29 January 1706 (~63)
1 live poem · English

Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset, was born on 24 January 1638 and died on 29 January 1706. Although his birth year is occasionally given incorrectly as 1643, the date generally accepted by modern biographical scholarship is 1638. He was one of the most vivid aristocratic personalities of Restoration England: a court wit, lyric poet, naval volunteer, political officeholder, patron of writers, and, in his youth,…

Neighbourhood: Georgian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Restoration Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
Alexander Brome

Alexander Brome

1620 – 30 June 1666 (~46)
2 live poems · English

Alexander Brome, born in 1620 and dead on 30 June 1666, belongs to that lively but unevenly remembered company of seventeenth-century English writers whose poems were made for circulation, sociability, controversy, and song. He was a lawyer by profession, a Royalist by conviction, an editor and occasional dramatist by literary activity, and, above all, a writer of satirical and convivial verse. His name is not common…

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Irony, Tenderness

In time

Charles Sackville
Alexander Brome
1620 1706
They overlapped for 24 years (1643–1666). When Charles Sackville was born, Alexander Brome was about 23. Charles Sackville was about 23 when Alexander Brome died.

On the map

About 264 km separate Copt Hall, Essex, England from Evershot, Dorset, England. Both have ground in England.

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

Charles Sackville only

Alexander Brome only

From the biographies

dorset restoration culture

Charles Sackville: dorset, restoration, social, earl, court, patron, culture, patronage. Alexander Brome: royalist, london, dorset, the cunning lovers, english anacreon, civil war, satirical verse, wine.

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.

A Ballad by the Lord Dorset when at Sea
Charles Sackville
78% life, love
Compare
The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
A Ballad by the Lord Dorset when at Sea
Charles Sackville
74% restoration
Compare
A Catch
Alexander Brome

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Charles Sackville: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Alexander Brome: Joy, Irony, Tenderness.

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