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

Anthony Munday Anthony Munday

Poet B

William Alexander William Alexander
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 67% Poems 79% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
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…

“If Palmerin hath sustained any wrong by my bad translation, being so worthily set down in other languages, your Honour, having such special knowledge in them, I hope will let slip any fault escaped in respect I have done my goodwill, the largest talent I have to bestow.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Anger
Listen Timeline Affinities
William Alexander

William Alexander

c. 1567 – 12 February 1640 (~73)
2 live poems · English

William Alexander, later the first Earl of Stirling, was born about 1567 at Menstrie in Clackmannanshire, near Stirling, Scotland, and died in London on 12 February 1640. He belonged to that distinctive early Stuart class of men for whom poetry, government service, courtly advancement, religious reflection, and colonial ambition were not separate callings but overlapping forms of public life. In his own century he wa…

“The glory of greatness consisting more in raising than in ruining of others, it is a far better course to purchase fame by the Plantation of a new World than as many Princes have done by the desolation of this.”

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

In time

Anthony Munday
William Alexander
1560 1640
They overlapped for 67 years (1567–1633). When William Alexander was born, Anthony Munday was about 7. William Alexander was about 66 when Anthony Munday died.
Anthony Munday in history William Alexander in history Years they were given

On the map

About 572 km separate City of London, England from Menstrie, Stirling, Scotland. Both have ground in London.

Anthony Munday

William Alexander

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

Anthony Munday only

desire beauty imagination dream memory deceit stole

William Alexander only

aurora tithonus myth dawn grief tears beloved world life death body mortality

From the biographies

history

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. William Alexander: menstrie, clackmannanshire, first earl of stirling, james vi and i, charles i, nova scotia schemes, the tragedie of darius, aurora.

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.

Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
78%
Compare
Aurora
William Alexander
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
72%
Compare
A Short View of the State of Man
William Alexander
You stole my love
Anthony Munday
65% love
Compare
Aurora
William Alexander
You stole my love
Anthony Munday
62%
Compare
A Short View of the State of Man
William Alexander

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

Anthony Munday

1567 Apprenticeship to John Allde
1586 Publication of 'The Mirror of Mutability'
1590 Involvement in Civic Pageantry
1600 Publication of 'The First Part of the History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1600 Publication of 'The History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1600 Publication of 'The Second Part of the History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1601 Publication of 'The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon'
1603 Involvement in the Publication of 'The Book of Sir Thomas More'

William Alexander

1601 Marriage to Janet Erskine
1603 Grand Tour of Europe
1604 Publication of 'The Monarchicke Tragedies'
1610 Friendship with William Drummond
1625 Appointment as Secretary of State for Scotland
1630 Publication of 'The Paraphrase of the Song of Songs'
1637 Publication of 'The Works of William Alexander'
1640 Death of William Alexander

Emotional landscapes

Anthony Munday: Longing, Sorrow, Anger. William Alexander: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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