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

George Gascoigne George Gascoigne

Poet B

Sir Thomas Wyatt Sir Thomas Wyatt
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 68% Poems 78% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
George Gascoigne

George Gascoigne

c. 1539 – 7 October 1577 (~38)
2 live poems · English

George Gascoigne, born about 1539 and dead on 7 October 1577, was one of the most adventurous and consequential writers of early Elizabethan England. Poet, translator, dramatist, critic, court entertainer, soldier, traveler, and sometime political aspirant, he lived with the instability and appetite that his writing so often dramatizes. His career was brief, troubled by debt, family conflict, legal suspicion, militar…

“the more monosyllables that you use, the truer Englishman you shall seem, and the less you shall smell of the inkhorn”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Joy
Sir Thomas Wyatt

Sir Thomas Wyatt

c. 1503 – 11 October 1542 (~39)
3 live poems · English

Sir Thomas Wyatt, born about 1503 and dead on 11 October 1542, stands at the beginning of the English Renaissance lyric. He was not the first English poet to write about love, loss, faith, or fortune, but he altered the sound, scale, and inwardness of English poetry. In his hands, verse became a place where private desire could collide with public danger, where a courtier could confess exhaustion without naming its c…

“Sir, he who would be thought a wise man in the day-time, must not play the fool at night.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

George Gascoigne
Sir Thomas Wyatt
1503 1577
They overlapped for 4 years (1539–1542). When George Gascoigne was born, Sir Thomas Wyatt was about 36. George Gascoigne was about 3 when Sir Thomas Wyatt died.

On the map

About 102 km separate Cardington, Bedfordshire, England from Allington Castle, Kent, 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

From the biographies

desire court

George Gascoigne: cardington, bedfordshire, elizabeth breton, trinity college cambridge, gray's inn, supposes, the adventures of master f. j., a hundreth sundrie flowres. Sir Thomas Wyatt: english renaissance lyric, henry viii, courtier, diplomat, ambassador, whoso list to hunt, anne boleyn, petrarchan sonnet.

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 Lover's Lullaby
George Gascoigne
75%
Compare
They Flee From Me
Sir Thomas Wyatt
A Lover's Lullaby
George Gascoigne
72% self, desire
Compare
I Find No Peace
Sir Thomas Wyatt
A Lover's Lullaby
George Gascoigne
69% self, eyes
Compare
Your Looks so Often Cast
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Of all the birds
George Gascoigne
65%
Compare
They Flee From Me
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Of all the birds
George Gascoigne
64% beloved
Compare
I Find No Peace
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Of all the birds
George Gascoigne
63% beloved
Compare
Your Looks so Often Cast
Sir Thomas Wyatt

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

George Gascoigne: Tenderness, Peace, Joy. Sir Thomas Wyatt: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

Skip to main content