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 Bartlet John Bartlet

Poet B

Sir John Suckling Sir John Suckling
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 63% Poems 78% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Bartlet

John Bartlet

c. 1585 – c. 1620 (~35)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight years of the Elizabethan era, as the golden age of English poetry shimmered into the Jacobean dawn, a quiet but gifted composer emerged whose voice—though faint in the historical record—resonates with a rare and haunting beauty. John Bartlet, active roughly between 1585 and 1620, remains one of the most enigmatic figures of early English secular music. His life is shrouded in mystery, his dates approx…

“It is a question hardly to be determined whether Music may esteem herself more graced by the singular skill and exquisite knowledge wherewith your Lordship is endued, or by the many benefits your bounty hath conferred on the professors of that faculty.”

Neighbourhood: Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
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…

“Among the truths which we receive, none more reasonably commands our belief than those which by all men at all times have been assented to.”

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

In time

John Bartlet
Sir John Suckling
1585 1642
They overlapped for 12 years (1609–1620). When Sir John Suckling was born, John Bartlet was about 24. Sir John Suckling was about 11 when John Bartlet died.
John Bartlet in history Sir John Suckling in history Years they were given

On the map

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

John Bartlet

Sir John Suckling

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

beloved lover love

John Bartlet only

pursuit music betrayal expectation

Sir John Suckling only

cavalier pale suffering woman debt social pleasure freedom desire life

From the biographies

John Bartlet: elizabethan era, jacobean dawn, a booke of ayres, thomas morley, john dowland, thomas campion, lute song, lyric poetry. 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.

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.

Whither runeth my sweethart
John Bartlet
72%
Compare
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
Whither runeth my sweethart
John Bartlet
71% beloved, lover
Compare
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
When from my love I looked for love
John Bartlet
71% love, beloved, lover
Compare
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
When from my love I looked for love
John Bartlet
67% love
Compare
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1609 Publication of 'The Civil Wars'
1609 Sea Venture Is Wrecked on Bermuda
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

John Bartlet

1600 Possible Training in Choral Tradition
1606 Publication of A Booke of Ayres
1610 Active in London’s Musical Scene
1610 Cultural Context of Early 17th Century England
1610 Influence of the Elizabethan Musical Tradition
1615 Collaboration with Contemporary Poets
1615 Participation in Musical Gatherings
1620 Legacy of Emotional Depth in Music

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'

Emotional landscapes

John Bartlet: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Sir John Suckling: Irony, Longing, Sorrow.

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