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



Poet Affinities

Every poet has a thematic centre of gravity averaged from their critiqued poems. Here we use that to find the poets whose work rhymes with a given writer — often in surprising ways.

Rank by: Both (blended) Life & context Their poems

Poets whose work rhymes most with Stephen Hawes by life & context

Thomas, Lord Vaux
25 April 1509–c. October 1556 (~47)
2 poems analysed
79% affinity
Edward Hovell-Thurlow
10 June 1781–4 June 1829 (~48)
2 poems analysed
78% affinity
Thomas Hoccleve
c. 1368–8 May 1426 (~58)
1 poem analysed
78% affinity
Shared: medieval
Geoffrey Chaucer
c. 1343–25 October 1400 (~57)
2 poems analysed
77% affinity
Robert Stephen Hawker
3 December 1803–15 August 1875 (~72)
3 poems analysed
77% affinity
Robert Henryson
c. 1425–c. 1500 (~75)
1 poem analysed
76% affinity
Shared: medieval
Thomas Stanley
3 September 1625–12 April 1678 (~53)
3 poems analysed
76% affinity
Sir Robert Ayton
1570–25 February 1638 (~68)
1 poem analysed
75% affinity
Shared: education, court
Thomas Carew
1595–22 March 1640 (~45)
4 poems analysed
75% affinity
Shared: court
Francis Hastings Doyle
21 August 1810–8 June 1888 (~78)
3 poems analysed
75% affinity
John Lydgate
c. 1370–c. 1450 (~80)
1 poem analysed
75% affinity
Sir John Beaumont
c. 1583–19 April 1627 (~44)
1 poem analysed
75% affinity
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