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

John Ward John Ward

Poet B

Martin Peerson Martin Peerson
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
John Ward

John Ward

8 September 1571 – 1638 (~67)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight years of Elizabeth I's reign, when England stood poised between the medieval world and the dawning age of Shakespeare, a composer emerged whose voice would capture the profound melancholy and spiritual yearning of a nation in transition. John Ward, born around 1571 and departing this world in 1638, represents one of the most compelling yet enigmatic figures in the pantheon of English Renaissance music…

“The excellent variety of these Compositions hath fed time with fullness, and bred many Censors, more curious than perhaps judicial.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Martin Peerson

Martin Peerson

c. 1571 – 16 January 1651 (~80)
1 live poem · English

In the twilight years of Elizabeth I's reign and throughout the tumultuous early decades of the seventeenth century, when England stood at the crossroads between medieval traditions and modern innovations, one composer quietly crafted some of the most exquisite musical settings of poetry ever written. Martin Peerson, born around 1571 and dying in 1651, lived through one of the most extraordinary periods in English cu…

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Ward
Martin Peerson
1571 1651
They overlapped for 68 years (1571–1638). They were born in the same year. Martin Peerson was about 67 when John Ward died.
John Ward in history Martin Peerson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 157 km separate Canterbury, Kent, England from March, Cambridgeshire, England. Both have ground in London.

John Ward

Martin Peerson

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

love

John Ward only

pastoral amyntas grief sorrow sable mourning stole lights nature cupid wounded springs

Martin Peerson only

return spring fate hope reunion lovers

From the biographies

music composer

John Ward: canterbury, thomas weelkes, orlando gibbons, upon a bank with roses set, retire my troubled soul, the first set of english madrigals, die now, my heart, elizabethan golden age. Martin Peerson: march, cambridgeshire, st. paul's cathedral, william byrd, thomas tallis, christopher marlowe, william shakespeare, mottects or grave chamber musique.

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 a bank
John Ward
77% love
Compare
The spring of joy is dry
Martin Peerson
Come, sable night
John Ward
74%
Compare
The spring of joy is dry
Martin Peerson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1592 Imprisonment for Religious Activities
1595 Execution at Tyburn
1600 English East India Company Chartered
1600 William Gilbert publishes De Magnete and coins electricus
1603 Imprisonment in the Tower of London
1605 Cervantes Publishes Don Quixote Featuring the Windmill Combat Scene
1605 Publication of 'Don Quixote' Part I
1615 Cervantes publishes the second part of Don Quixote

John Ward

1580 Possible Early Education in Canterbury
1600 Marriage to Anne Ward
1607 Publication of 'The First Book of Madrigals'
1610 Appointment as a Musician in the Chapel Royal
1613 Publication of 'The Second Book of Madrigals'
1625 Death of John Ward's Wife
1628 Publication of 'The Third Book of Madrigals'

Martin Peerson

1590 Education in Music and Poetry
1600 Marriage to Elizabeth
1613 Publication of 'The First Book of Songs and Ayres'
1615 Patronage by Sir Robert Sidney
1620 Publication of 'The Second Book of Songs and Ayres'
1630 Publication of 'The Third Book of Songs and Ayres'
1635 Death of His Wife Elizabeth
1640 Publication of 'The Fourth Book of Songs and Ayres'

Emotional landscapes

John Ward: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Martin Peerson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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