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

Richard Tottel Richard Tottel
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 83% Blended 77%
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
Richard Tottel

Richard Tottel

c. 1528 – 2 July 1593 (~65)
2 live poems · English

Richard Tottel, born around 1528 or 1530 in the bustling cathedral city of Exeter in Devon, emerged from modest provincial roots to become one of the most transformative figures in the history of English literature. Though his primary trade was the printing of law books—volumes that shaped the legal minds of Tudor England—his name endures as the visionary behind *Songes and Sonettes*, better known today as *Tottel’s…

“To stuffe a preface with praise of this boke, or with exhorting you to reding of it, were in a matter not doubtfull to take fond peine not nedefull.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Anthony Munday
Richard Tottel
1528 1633
They overlapped for 34 years (1560–1593). When Anthony Munday was born, Richard Tottel was about 32. Anthony Munday was about 33 when Richard Tottel died.
Anthony Munday in history Richard Tottel in history Years they were given

On the map

About 255 km separate City of London, England from Exeter, Devon, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Anthony Munday

Richard Tottel

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

desire love

Anthony Munday only

beauty imagination dream memory deceit stole

Richard Tottel only

life death offense tottel pain gain mortality beloved lover refusal

From the biographies

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. Richard Tottel: exeter, tottel’s miscellany, songes and sonettes, henry howard, thomas wyatt, william middleton, fleet street, stationers’ company.

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
75% desire
Compare
The Louer Refused of His Loue Imbraceth Death
Richard Tottel
You stole my love
Anthony Munday
75% love
Compare
The Louer Refused of His Loue Imbraceth Death
Richard Tottel
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
73%
Compare
Vpon Consideracion of the State of This Lyfe He Wisheth Death
Richard Tottel
You stole my love
Anthony Munday
70%
Compare
Vpon Consideracion of the State of This Lyfe He Wisheth Death
Richard Tottel

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1560 Performance of 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' at Christ's College
1560 The Eclipse that Inspired Tycho Brahe
1561 Gorboduc Is Performed before Elizabeth I
1561 The Peresopnytsia Gospels Are Completed
1564 Shakespeare Born
1565 Manila Galleon Trade Begins
1566 Performance of 'Supposes' at Gray's Inn
1592 Imprisonment for Religious Activities

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'

Richard Tottel

1540 Tottel's Early Education in Exeter
1550 Patronage from the Earl of Surrey
1550 Relocation to London for Business
1557 Publication of *Tottel's Miscellany*
1560 Involvement in Tudor Literary Culture
1560 Publication of the Second Edition of *Tottel's Miscellany*
1565 Publication of *The Songes and Sonettes*
1590 Final Years in London

Emotional landscapes

Anthony Munday: Longing, Sorrow, Anger. Richard Tottel: Despair, Sorrow, Longing.

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