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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we 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

Sir John Suckling Sir John Suckling

Poet B

John Donne John Donne
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 73% Poems 86% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir John Suckling

Sir John Suckling

10 February 1609 – 1642 (~33)
2 live poems · English

Sir John Suckling stands as one of the most vivid and enigmatic figures of the seventeenth century, a man whose life was lived with the same flamboyant intensity that characterized his verse. Born in 1609 and dying under mysterious circumstances in 1642, Suckling's brief thirty-three years encapsulate the glittering excess and underlying tragedy of the Caroline era. He is remembered today as the quintessential Cavali…

“I hope, when you know the worst, you will at once leap into the river, and swim through handsomely, and not, weatherbeaten with the divers blasts of irresolution, stand shivering upon the brink.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
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…

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”

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

In time

Sir John Suckling
John Donne
1572 1642
They overlapped for 23 years (1609–1631). When Sir John Suckling was born, John Donne was about 37. Sir John Suckling was about 22 when John Donne died.
Sir John Suckling in history John Donne in history Years they were given

On the map

About 17 km separate Whitton, Middlesex, England from London, England. Both have ground in London.

Sir John Suckling

John Donne

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 beloved woman social desire life

Sir John Suckling only

lover cavalier pale suffering debt pleasure freedom

John Donne only

death self heart world lovers power spiritual nature divine religious

From the biographies

social

Sir John Suckling: whitton, cavalier poet, king charles i, fragmenta aurea, trinity college cambridge, gray's inn, first bishops' war, the ballad of a wedding. John Donne: london, catholic, anglican preacher, songs and sonnets, the flea, the sun rising, the canonization, a valediction: forbidding mourning.

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.

Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
80% love
Compare
Love's Diet
John Donne
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
79% love
Compare
Sweetest love, I do not goe
John Donne
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
78% love
Compare
Love's Usury
John Donne
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
78% love
Compare
Negative love
John Donne
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
78% lover, love
Compare
The Paradox
John Donne
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
78% love, beloved
Compare
The Damp
John Donne

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1615 Cervantes publishes the second part of Don Quixote
1616 Death of William Shakespeare
1619 First Africans Arrive in Virginia
1620 Mayflower Carries the Pilgrims to New England
1620 Sailing of the Mayflower
1620 The Mayflower Compact is Signed
1623 Publication of 'The First Folio' of William Shakespeare (1623)
1623 The Miraculous Preservation of the First Folio

Sir John Suckling

1623 Education at Trinity College, Cambridge
1627 Inheritance of Wealth and Estate
1630 Friendship with Sir Robert Sidney
1630 Involvement in the Court of Charles I
1638 Publication of 'Aglaura'
1640 Return to England from France
1642 Exile in France
1646 Publication of 'The Session of the Poets'

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'

Emotional landscapes

Sir John Suckling: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. John Donne: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

Skip to main content