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

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 69% Blended 69%
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…

“You are now free; and what matter is it to a prisoner whether the fetters be taken off the ordinary way or not?”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Longing, Sorrow
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…

“We rise with the lark and go to bed with the lamb.”

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

In time

Sir John Suckling
Nicholas Breton
1554 1642
They overlapped for 17 years (1609–1625). When Sir John Suckling was born, Nicholas Breton was about 55. Sir John Suckling was about 16 when Nicholas Breton died.
Sir John Suckling in history Nicholas Breton in history Years they were given

On the map

About 17 km separate Whitton, Middlesex, England from London, England. Both have ground in London.

Sir John Suckling

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

Sir John Suckling only

lover cavalier pale suffering beloved woman debt social pleasure freedom desire life

Nicholas Breton only

coridon world truth shepherd pastoral witness sacred

From the biographies

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. 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.

Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
73% love
Compare
Phillida and Coridon
Nicholas Breton
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
66% love
Compare
Phillida and Coridon
Nicholas Breton

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'

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

Sir John Suckling: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. Nicholas Breton: Joy, Tenderness, Wonder.

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