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

Thomas Campion Thomas Campion

Poet B

Anthony Munday Anthony Munday
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% Poems 81% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Campion

Thomas Campion

12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620 (~53)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight of the Elizabethan era, when the English language was still finding its lyrical wings, when Shakespeare’s quill was etching immortality into parchment and the lute still whispered through candlelit chambers, there walked a man whose artistry shimmered with quiet brilliance — Thomas Campion. Born in 1567, dead by 1620, Campion lived a life that spanned the golden age of English poetry and music, yet hi…

“A poet is not born, but made.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Poet-Musicians, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Peace
Anthony Munday

Anthony Munday

c. 13 October 1560 – 10 August 1633 (~73)
2 live poems · English

In the bustling, smoke-hung streets of Elizabethan London, where the clatter of hooves mingled with the cries of hawkers and the distant peal of church bells, a young man of quick wit and tireless pen emerged from the shadows of obscurity to become one of the most versatile, if underappreciated, literary figures of his age. Anthony Munday—born circa 1560, died in 1633—was not merely a poet or playwright, but a litera…

“Onelie for the desire I had to see it; that, when I came home againe, I might say, once in my life, I have beene at Rome.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Anger

In time

Thomas Campion
Anthony Munday
1560 1633
They overlapped for 54 years (1567–1620). When Thomas Campion was born, Anthony Munday was about 7. Anthony Munday was about 60 when Thomas Campion died.

On the map

About 1 km separate St. Andrew Holborn, London, England from City of London, England. Both have ground in London.

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

london

Thomas Campion: st. andrew holborn, merchant taylors' school, peterhouse, cambridge, gray's inn, the triumphs of oriana, rose-cheeked laura, come, a booke of ayres, observations in the art of english poesie. Anthony Munday: elizabethan london, sir francis walsingham, the english romayne lyfe, john a kent and john a cumber, metropolis coronata, the triumphs of reunited britannia, the downfall and the death of robert earl of huntington, robin hood.

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.

There Is a Garden in Her Face
Thomas Campion
79% beauty, desire
Compare
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
Jack and Joan
Thomas Campion
71%
Compare
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
There Is a Garden in Her Face
Thomas Campion
67% love
Compare
You stole my love
Anthony Munday
Jack and Joan
Thomas Campion
64%
Compare
You stole my love
Anthony Munday

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Campion: Joy, Tenderness, Peace. Anthony Munday: Longing, Sorrow, Anger.

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