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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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

Sir Walter Raleigh Sir Walter Raleigh

Poet B

Fulke Greville Fulke Greville
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 72% Poems 86% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh

c. 1554 – 29 October 1618 (~64)
2 live poems · English

Sir Walter Raleigh, born about 1554 at Hayes Barton in the parish of East Budleigh, Devon, and executed in London on 29 October 1618, remains one of the most vivid and contradictory figures of the English Renaissance. He was a soldier, imperial promoter, courtier, colonial entrepreneur, naval commander, politician, prisoner, historian, scientist, and poet. In popular memory he is often reduced to a picturesque legend…

“Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities
Fulke Greville

Fulke Greville

3 October 1554 – 30 September 1628 (~74)
2 live poems · English

In the grand tapestry of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, few figures embody the complex intersection of political ambition and poetic genius quite like Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke. Born into privilege in 1554 and dying by violence in 1628, Greville's seventy-four years spanned some of the most transformative decades in English history and literature. He was a man who moved with equal facility through the tr…

“Fulke Greville, servant to Queen Elizabeth, councillor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Political Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sir Walter Raleigh
Fulke Greville
1554 1628
They overlapped for 65 years (1554–1618). They were born in the same year. Fulke Greville was about 64 when Sir Walter Raleigh died.
Sir Walter Raleigh in history Fulke Greville in history Years they were given

On the map

About 191 km separate Hayes Barton, Devon, England from Beauchamp's Court, Alcester, Warwickshire. Both have ground in London.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Fulke Greville

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

death life

Sir Walter Raleigh only

mortality grave dust trust power recognition reality philosophical judgment

Fulke Greville only

soul breath body eternity name divine grace spiritual hell christ

From the biographies

court

Sir Walter Raleigh: hayes barton, east budleigh, queen elizabeth i, humphrey gilbert, the nymph's reply to the shepherd, the passionate shepherd to his love, history of the world, lost colony. Fulke Greville: warwickshire, beauchamp court, philip sidney, caelica, mustapha, alaham, jacobean, treasurer of the navy.

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.

The Night before his Death
Sir Walter Raleigh
86% death, life
Compare
You that seek what life is in death
Fulke Greville
What Is Our Life?
Sir Walter Raleigh
82% life, death
Compare
You that seek what life is in death
Fulke Greville
The Night before his Death
Sir Walter Raleigh
76%
Compare
Down in the depth of mine iniquity
Fulke Greville
What Is Our Life?
Sir Walter Raleigh
68%
Compare
Down in the depth of mine iniquity
Fulke Greville

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1556 The Shaanxi Earthquake
1559 Coronation of Elizabeth I
1560 The Eclipse that Inspired Tycho Brahe
1564 Shakespeare Born
1592 Imprisonment for Religious Activities
1595 Execution at Tyburn
1600 English East India Company Chartered
1600 William Gilbert publishes De Magnete and coins electricus

Sir Walter Raleigh

1568 Education at Oriel College, Oxford
1591 Marriage to Elizabeth Throckmorton
1595 Exploration of Guiana
1597 Publication of 'The Ocean to Cynthia'
1600 Publication of 'The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd'
1603 Imprisonment in the Tower of London
1616 Return from Imprisonment
1618 Publication of 'The Lie'

Fulke Greville

1565 Education at Shrewsbury School
1570 Friendship with Philip Sidney
1573 Attending Trinity College, Cambridge
1584 Becoming a Member of Parliament
1621 Becoming 1st Baron Brooke
1625 Friendship with Ben Jonson
1628 Death by Violence
1652 Publication of 'The Life of Sir Philip Sidney'

Emotional landscapes

Sir Walter Raleigh: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality. Fulke Greville: Spirituality, Sorrow, Despair.

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