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

Sir John Suckling Sir John Suckling

Poet B

Edmund Waller Edmund Waller
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 80% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir John Suckling

Sir John Suckling

10 February 1609 – 1642 (~33)
2 live poems · English

Sir John Suckling stands as one of the most vivid and enigmatic figures of the seventeenth century, a man whose life was lived with the same flamboyant intensity that characterized his verse. Born in 1609 and dying under mysterious circumstances in 1642, Suckling's brief thirty-three years encapsulate the glittering excess and underlying tragedy of the Caroline era. He is remembered today as the quintessential Cavali…

“Horseley air did excel the waters of the Bath, just so much as love is a more noble disease than the pox.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
Edmund Waller

Edmund Waller

3 March 1606 – 21 October 1687 (~81)
4 live poems · English

Edmund Waller was born on 3 March 1606 at Coleshill, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire, and died on 21 October 1687 at Beaconsfield. His long life carried him through the reigns of James I and Charles I, the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and Protectorate, the Restoration of Charles II, and the opening years of James II’s rule. Few English poets lived so visibly amid such violent political reversals, and fewer still man…

“The King governs by Law. Let us look back to the evils we had, in order to prevent more. We give public money, and must see that it goes to public use.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sir John Suckling
Edmund Waller
1606 1687
They overlapped for 34 years (1609–1642). When Sir John Suckling was born, Edmund Waller was about 3. Edmund Waller was about 36 when Sir John Suckling died.
Sir John Suckling in history Edmund Waller in history Years they were given

On the map

About 30 km separate Whitton, Middlesex, England from Coleshill, Buckinghamshire, England. Both have ground in London.

Sir John Suckling

Edmund Waller

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

beloved life

Sir John Suckling only

love lover cavalier pale suffering woman debt social pleasure freedom desire

Edmund Waller only

beauty death flowers grief loss queen mind praise courtly venus soul ribbon

From the biographies

social

Sir John Suckling: whitton, cavalier poet, king charles i, fragmenta aurea, trinity college cambridge, gray's inn, first bishops' war, the ballad of a wedding. Edmund Waller: coleshill, beaconsfield, james i, charles i, civil wars, commonwealth, restoration, lady dorothy sidney.

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.

Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
75% cavalier, woman
Compare
Go, Lovely Rose
Edmund Waller
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
72%
Compare
Fade, Flow'rs!
Edmund Waller
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
71% love
Compare
On a Girdle
Edmund Waller
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
69% life
Compare
Fade, Flow'rs!
Edmund Waller
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
67% love, beloved
Compare
On a Girdle
Edmund Waller
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
66% social, life
Compare
Go, Lovely Rose
Edmund Waller

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1615 Cervantes publishes the second part of Don Quixote
1616 Death of William Shakespeare
1619 First Africans Arrive in Virginia
1620 Mayflower Carries the Pilgrims to New England
1620 Sailing of the Mayflower
1620 The Mayflower Compact is Signed
1623 Publication of 'The First Folio' of William Shakespeare (1623)
1623 The Miraculous Preservation of the First Folio

Sir John Suckling

1623 Education at Trinity College, Cambridge
1627 Inheritance of Wealth and Estate
1630 Friendship with Sir Robert Sidney
1630 Involvement in the Court of Charles I
1638 Publication of 'Aglaura'
1640 Return to England from France
1642 Exile in France
1646 Publication of 'The Session of the Poets'

Edmund Waller

1621 First Elected to Parliament
1645 Marriage to Lady Dorothy Sidney
1645 Publication of 'Go, Lovely Rose'
1645 Publication of 'The Battle of the Summer Islands'
1652 Return to England and Political Engagement
1660 Involvement in the Restoration
1685 Publication of 'The Poems of Edmund Waller'

Emotional landscapes

Sir John Suckling: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. Edmund Waller: Longing, Tenderness, Peace.

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