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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I want.

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.

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 Donne John Donne

Poet B

Francis Quarles Francis Quarles
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 70% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Donne

John Donne

1572 – 31 March 1631 (~59)
40 live poems · English

John Donne was born in London in 1572, probably in January, though the exact day remains uncertain, and he died in London on 31 March 1631. Few English writers have seemed so divided within themselves, or have turned division into such memorable art. He was at once a Catholic child in a Protestant state, an ambitious courtier whose prospects were ruined by love, a husband burdened by debt and bereavement, a poet of e…

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Francis Quarles

Francis Quarles

8 May 1592 – 8 September 1644 (~52)
1 live poem · English

Francis Quarles, baptized on 8 May 1592 and buried on 8 September 1644, was among the most widely read English devotional poets of the seventeenth century. In his own lifetime and for many generations afterward, his name was familiar in households that might never have owned the works of John Donne, George Herbert, or John Milton. His poetry was not designed chiefly for fashionable literary circles. It sought instead…

“The way to be safe is never to be secure.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Donne
Francis Quarles
1572 1644
They overlapped for 40 years (1592–1631). When Francis Quarles was born, John Donne was about 20. Francis Quarles was about 39 when John Donne died.
John Donne in history Francis Quarles in history Years they were given

On the map

About 91 km separate London, England from Stratford, Essex, England. Both have ground in London.

John Donne

Francis Quarles

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 divine

John Donne only

love beloved death self heart world desire lovers power woman social spiritual

Francis Quarles only

quarles shortness lilies faith fleeting devotional

From the biographies

london religious

John Donne: london, catholic, anglican preacher, songs and sonnets, the flea, the sun rising, the canonization, a valediction: forbidding mourning. Francis Quarles: essex, romford, christ's college cambridge, ursula woodgate, a feast for wormes, hadassa, job militant, sion's elegies.

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.

The Computation
John Donne
77% life
Compare
The Shortness of Life
Francis Quarles
The Paradox
John Donne
75% life
Compare
The Shortness of Life
Francis Quarles
Holy Sonnet 10: Death, Be Not Proud
John Donne
74% life
Compare
The Shortness of Life
Francis Quarles
No Man Is an Island
John Donne
74%
Compare
The Shortness of Life
Francis Quarles
Breake of Day
John Donne
74% life
Compare
The Shortness of Life
Francis Quarles
The Triple Foole
John Donne
73%
Compare
The Shortness of Life
Francis Quarles

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 Donne

1593 Brother Henry's Imprisonment and Death
1610 Publication of 'Pseudo-Martyr'
1611 Writing the Anniversaries for Elizabeth Drury
1615 Ordination as Anglican Priest
1617 Death of Wife Anne More
1621 Appointment as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral
1623 Severe Illness and 'Devotions upon Emergent Occasions'
1631 Composition of 'Death's Duel'

Francis Quarles

1608 Francis Quarles' Education Begins
1620 Marriage to Elizabeth
1635 Publication of 'Emblems'
1639 Appointment as a Court Poet
1640 Death of His Wife Elizabeth
1643 Publication of 'The Divine Emblems'
1644 Final Years in Exile

Emotional landscapes

John Donne: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Francis Quarles: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.

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