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

Richard Barnefield Richard Barnefield

Poet B

Nicholas Breton Nicholas Breton
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 74% Blended 74%
Swap sides Another related pair
Richard Barnefield

Richard Barnefield

29 June 1574 – 1627 (~53)
1 live poem · English

Richard Barnefield, baptized on 29 June 1574 and buried in 1627, occupies a small but remarkably provocative place in the history of English Renaissance poetry. He was not among the most prolific writers of the Elizabethan age, nor did he sustain a public literary career over decades as Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, or William Shakespeare did. Yet the poems he published during a brief period in the 1590s have continued…

“This protestation (I hope) will satisfie th' indifferent: and as for them that are maliciously enuious, as I cannot, so I care not to please.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Elizabethan Poets, LGBTQ+ Poets
Emotional landscape: Sensuality, Longing, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities
Nicholas Breton

Nicholas Breton

c. 1554 – c. 1625 (~71)
1 live poem · English

In the shadowed corridors of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, where the towering figures of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Jonson stride with immortal grace, there walks a quieter, more elusive figure — Nicholas Breton. Born around 1554 and vanishing from historical record by approximately 1625, Breton was a prolific poet, pamphleteer, and prose writer whose voice shimmered with pastoral charm, devotional fervor, and…

“A wise man is a clock that never strikes but at his home, or rather like a dial that being set right with the sun, keeps his true course in his compass.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Richard Barnefield
Nicholas Breton
1554 1627
They overlapped for 52 years (1574–1625). When Richard Barnefield was born, Nicholas Breton was about 20. Richard Barnefield was about 51 when Nicholas Breton died.
Richard Barnefield in history Nicholas Breton in history Years they were given

On the map

About 208 km separate Norbury, Staffordshire, England from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Richard Barnefield

Nicholas Breton

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

Richard Barnefield only

beloved beauty desire body mouth male sonnet

Nicholas Breton only

coridon world truth shepherd pastoral witness sacred

From the biographies

pastoral

Richard Barnefield: staffordshire, norbury, the affectionate shepherd, cynthia, the legend of cassandra, oxford, brasnose college, male beauty. Nicholas Breton: elizabethan literature, jacobean literature, the passionate shepheard, george gascoigne, the workes of a young wit, the pilgrimage to paradise, a divine looking-glasse, fantasticks.

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.

Sonnet 17
Richard Barnefield
73% love
Compare
Phillida and Coridon
Nicholas Breton

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

Richard Barnefield

1589 Matriculation at Brasenose College, Oxford
1590 Friendship with William Shakespeare
1592 Relocation to London
1594 Publication of 'The Affectionate Shepherd'
1595 Publication of 'Cynthia, with Certaine Sonnets, and the Legend of Cassandra'
1598 Publication of 'The Encomion of Lady Pecunia'
1599 Contributions to 'The Passionate Pilgrim'
1600 Involvement in Literary Patronage

Nicholas Breton

1559 Early Orphanhood of Nicholas Breton
1594 Publication of 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love'
1598 Marriage to Anne Breton
1602 Publication of 'The Ghost of Richard III'
1605 Relocation to the countryside
1613 Publication of 'The Works of Nicholas Breton'
1621 Publication of 'The Soul's Errand'
1625 Final Years in London

Emotional landscapes

Richard Barnefield: Sensuality, Longing, Wonder. Nicholas Breton: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder.

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