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

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift
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 66% Poems 77% Blended 71%
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…

“Among the truths which we receive, none more reasonably commands our belief than those which by all men at all times have been assented to.”

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

Jonathan Swift

30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745 (~78)
2 live poems · English

The life of Jonathan Swift presents one of literature's most fascinating paradoxes: a clergyman who wrote with brutal satirical force, an Irishman who felt himself English, a conservative who championed the oppressed, and a misanthrope whose fury arose from disappointed idealism. Born into poverty and obscurity, Swift became one of the most powerful prose writers in the English language, creating works that continue…

“May you live all the days of your life.”

Neighbourhood: Augustan Poets, Irish Poets, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Fear, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sir John Suckling
Jonathan Swift
1609 1745
Their lives did not overlap. 25 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.
Sir John Suckling in history Jonathan Swift in history Years they were given

On the map

About 453 km separate Whitton, Middlesex, England from Dublin, Ireland. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Sir John Suckling

Jonathan Swift

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

woman social

Sir John Suckling only

love lover cavalier pale suffering beloved debt pleasure freedom desire life

Jonathan Swift only

society condemned death criminal authenticity corinna body beauty male london room

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. Jonathan Swift: gulliver's travels, a modest proposal, the drapier's letters, esther johnson, william temple, the examiner, robert harley, henry st. john.

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
70%
Compare
Clever Tom Clinch Going to Be Hanged
Jonathan Swift
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
69% social
Compare
A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed
Jonathan Swift
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
68% woman
Compare
A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed
Jonathan Swift
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
65% social
Compare
Clever Tom Clinch Going to Be Hanged
Jonathan Swift

The world around them

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'

Jonathan Swift

1682 Swift's Education at Trinity College
1689 Employment with Sir William Temple
1704 Publication of 'A Tale of a Tub'
1704 Publication of 'The Battle of the Books'
1713 Swift's Role as Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral
1714 Swift's Involvement in the Irish Political Scene
1726 Publication of 'Gulliver's Travels'
1729 Publication of 'A Modest Proposal'

Emotional landscapes

Sir John Suckling: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. Jonathan Swift: Irony, Fear, Despair.

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