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 Fletcher John Fletcher

Poet B

Francis Beaumont Francis Beaumont
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 90% Blended 90%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Fletcher

John Fletcher

20 December 1579 – 29 August 1625 (~46)
2 live poems · English

John Fletcher, baptized on 20 December 1579 and buried on 29 August 1625, was one of the most successful, inventive, and influential dramatists of England’s Jacobean age. Though he is now less familiar to general readers than William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, or Christopher Marlowe, Fletcher was for generations among the most frequently performed writers in the English language. In the decades after his death, audienc…

“A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Peace, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont

1584 – 6 March 1616 (~32)
1 live poem · English

Francis Beaumont was born in 1584, probably at Grace-Dieu, the Beaumont family’s estate near Thringstone in Leicestershire, and died in London on 6 March 1616. His life was brief even by the hazardous standards of the early seventeenth century, but his literary afterlife has been exceptionally long. As a poet, satirist, comic experimenter, and—above all—dramatist, he helped to shape the distinctive sound and structur…

“What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life.”

Neighbourhood: Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Anger, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Fletcher
Francis Beaumont
1579 1625
They overlapped for 33 years (1584–1616). When Francis Beaumont was born, John Fletcher was about 5. John Fletcher was about 37 when Francis Beaumont died.
John Fletcher in history Francis Beaumont in history Years they were given

On the map

About 242 km separate Wittersham, Kent, England from Grace Dieu, Leicestershire, England. Both have ground in London.

John Fletcher

Francis Beaumont

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

jacobean passion

John Fletcher only

sorrow melancholy life passionate inner contemplative grief mourner loss pain

Francis Beaumont only

love beaumont reason folly social romantic self

From the biographies

ben jonson plays play king london

John Fletcher: rye, sussex, francis beaumont, the faithful shepherdess, philaster, the maid's tragedy, a king and no king, tragicomedy. Francis Beaumont: grace-dieu, thringstone, leicestershire, john fletcher, ben jonson, the woman hater, the knight of the burning pestle, inner temple.

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.

Melancholy
John Fletcher
77% jacobean, passion
Compare
Now fie on foolish love
Francis Beaumont
Weep no more
John Fletcher
70%
Compare
Now fie on foolish love
Francis Beaumont

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

John Fletcher

1591 Education at Corpus Christi College
1596 Death of Father Richard Fletcher
1600 Move to London
1606 Collaboration with Francis Beaumont
1608 Publication of 'The Faithful Shepherdess'
1610 Appointment as House Playwright
1613 Publication of 'The Chances'
1620 Collaboration with Philip Massinger

Francis Beaumont

1597 Education at Oxford - Francis Beaumont
1603 Involvement with the King's Men - Francis Beaumont
1606 Collaboration with John Fletcher - Francis Beaumont
1606 Friendship with John Fletcher - Francis Beaumont
1607 Publication of 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle' - Francis Beaumont
1608 Publication of 'Philaster' - Francis Beaumont
1611 Performance of 'The Maid's Tragedy' - Francis Beaumont
1616 Burial in Westminster Abbey - Francis Beaumont

Emotional landscapes

John Fletcher: Sorrow, Peace, Despair. Francis Beaumont: Irony, Anger, Sorrow.

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