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 Ward John Ward

Poet B

Thomas Tomkins Thomas Tomkins
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 81% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Ward

John Ward

8 September 1571 – 1638 (~67)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight years of Elizabeth I's reign, when England stood poised between the medieval world and the dawning age of Shakespeare, a composer emerged whose voice would capture the profound melancholy and spiritual yearning of a nation in transition. John Ward, born around 1571 and departing this world in 1638, represents one of the most compelling yet enigmatic figures in the pantheon of English Renaissance music…

“I present you here with such numbers best fitting your innated Harmony, and I hope not unworthy your Patronage.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
Thomas Tomkins

Thomas Tomkins

1572 – 9 June 1656 (~84)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight of the English Renaissance, as the sun dipped behind the hills of a vanishing golden age, there stood a solitary figure whose music shimmered with the last glow of that era’s brilliance — Thomas Tomkins, composer, organist, and quiet poet of sound. Born in 1572, in the cathedral town of St. David’s, Wales, and passing into silence in 1656, in the shadowed aftermath of civil war and Puritan upheaval, T…

“All of them excellent good”

Neighbourhood: Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Tenderness, Joy

In time

John Ward
Thomas Tomkins
1571 1656
They overlapped for 67 years (1572–1638). When Thomas Tomkins was born, John Ward was about 1. Thomas Tomkins was about 66 when John Ward died.

On the map

About 443 km separate Canterbury, Kent, England from St. David's, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

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

music composer

John Ward: canterbury, thomas weelkes, orlando gibbons, upon a bank with roses set, retire my troubled soul, the first set of english madrigals, die now, my heart, elizabethan golden age. Thomas Tomkins: st. david's, wales, william byrd, gloucester cathedral, chapel royal, o sing unto the lord a new song, the triumphs of oriana, a sad pavan for these distracted times.

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.

Upon a bank
John Ward
80% love
Compare
Weep no more, thou sorry boy
Thomas Tomkins
Upon a bank
John Ward
77% love
Compare
Too much I once lamented
Thomas Tomkins
Come, sable night
John Ward
70% sorrow
Compare
Weep no more, thou sorry boy
Thomas Tomkins
Come, sable night
John Ward
66%
Compare
Too much I once lamented
Thomas Tomkins

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Ward: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Thomas Tomkins: Sorrow, Tenderness, Joy.

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