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

John Bunyan John Bunyan
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 60% Blended 60%
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…

“The whole world hath been so eager to embrace that there is a Deity, that rather than it would have none at all, it hath too often been contented with a very mean one.”

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

John Bunyan

November 1628 – 31 August 1688 (~60)
1 live poem · English

John Bunyan, baptized on 30 November 1628 and dead on 31 August 1688, rose from the working life of rural Bedfordshire to become one of the most influential English religious writers of all time. Though he is best known as the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a book whose characters and phrases entered the language of generations of readers, Bunyan was also a preacher, controversialist, autobiographer, pastor, poet,…

“Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Renaissance Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Joy
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sir John Suckling
John Bunyan
1609 1688
They overlapped for 15 years (1628–1642). When John Bunyan was born, Sir John Suckling was about 19. John Bunyan was about 14 when Sir John Suckling died.
Sir John Suckling in history John Bunyan in history Years they were given

On the map

About 73 km separate Whitton, Middlesex, England from Elstow, Bedfordshire, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Sir John Suckling

John Bunyan

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

life

Sir John Suckling only

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

John Bunyan only

bunyan spiritual self humility divine power pilgrimage

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. John Bunyan: bedfordshire, elstow, the pilgrim’s progress, grace abounding to the chief of sinners, english civil war, john gifford, tinker, baptism by immersion.

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
He that is down needs fear no fall
John Bunyan
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
69% life
Compare
He that is down needs fear no fall
John Bunyan

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1628 Death by Violence
1628 Education at St Andrews University
1628 William Harvey Publishes 'De Motu Cordis'
1629 Appointment as Vicar of Dean Prior
1629 The Italian Plague of 1629
1634 Publication of 'Castara'
1640 Publication of 'Poems' Collection
1642 English Civil War Begins

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'

John Bunyan

1635 John Bunyan's Education at Local Grammar School
1644 John Bunyan's Military Service
1649 John Bunyan's Marriage to Mary
1660 John Bunyan's First Imprisonment
1666 John Bunyan's Publication of Grace Abounding
1672 John Bunyan's Release from Prison
1685 John Bunyan's Final Years in Bedford
1688 John Bunyan's Death

Emotional landscapes

Sir John Suckling: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. John Bunyan: Spirituality, Peace, Joy.

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