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



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

Tobias Hume Tobias Hume

Poet B

Thomas Ford Thomas Ford
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 75% Blended 75%
Swap sides Another related pair
Tobias Hume

Tobias Hume

c. 1579 – 16 April 1645 (~66)
1 live poem · English

In the vast and glittering tapestry of Renaissance music, where names like Palestrina, Byrd, and Dowland shimmer with canonical brilliance, there strides a figure less polished by posterity, yet no less compelling — Tobias Hume. Born in 1579, likely in the shadowed alleys of London or perhaps the rolling countryside of northern England, Hume emerges not as a cloistered churchman or courtly favorite, but as a man of t…

“My studies are far from servile imitations, I robbe no others inventions... These are mine own Phansies expressed by my proper Genius, which if thou dost dislike, let me see thine.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Irony, Joy, Sensuality
Thomas Ford

Thomas Ford

c. 1580 – November 1648 (~68)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight of the English Renaissance, when the courts of Elizabeth I and James I shimmered with the brilliance of poetry, drama, and music, there walked among the candlelit halls and intimate chambers a quiet craftsman of song — Thomas Ford. Though his name may not echo as loudly through history as those of William Byrd or John Dowland, Ford’s artistry lingers in the delicate interweaving of melody and verse, i…

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality

In time

Tobias Hume
Thomas Ford
1579 1648
They overlapped for 66 years (1580–1645). When Thomas Ford was born, Tobias Hume was about 1. Thomas Ford was about 65 when Tobias Hume died.

On the map

About 563 km separate Redbraes Castle, Berwickshire, Scotland from Devon, England. Both have ground in London and England and Westminster.

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

Tobias Hume only

Thomas Ford only

From the biographies

music composer songs lute

Tobias Hume: london, swedish army, duke charles, the first part of ayres, harke, harke, a souldiers resolution, captain humes poeticall musicke, the battle. Thomas Ford: oxford, exeter cathedral, henry frederick, prince of wales, since first i saw your face, musicke of sundrie kindes, fair sweet cruel, chapel royal.

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.

Tobacco Is Like Love
Tobias Hume
74% love, music
Compare
What then is love
Thomas Ford
Tobacco Is Like Love
Tobias Hume
74% love, music, desire
Compare
There is a lady sweet and kind
Thomas Ford

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Tobias Hume: Irony, Joy, Sensuality. Thomas Ford: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.

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