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

Richard Rowlands Richard Rowlands

Poet B

Joshua Sylvester Joshua Sylvester
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 73% Blended 73%
Swap sides Another related pair
Richard Rowlands

Richard Rowlands

c. 1550 – c. 1640 (~90)
1 live poem · English

Richard Rowlands, better known to history as Richard Verstegan or Verstegen, was born in London about 1550 and died in Antwerp in 1640. He belongs to that unusually rich category of Renaissance figures whose lives resist simple professional labels. He was a poet, translator, engraver, publisher, controversialist, antiquary, journalist, intelligence agent, and committed Catholic exile. He wrote in English, Latin, Dutc…

“She had that instinctive malice that makes one pick out for hatred the very persons who have done one a good turn. She was not merely ungrateful, but her only response to a benefit received was to revenge it.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Hymn Writers, Metaphysical Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Peace
Listen Timeline Affinities
Joshua Sylvester

Joshua Sylvester

1563 – 28 September 1618 (~55)
1 live poem · English

Joshua Sylvester, born in 1563 and dead on 28 September 1618, occupied an unusual and important place in the literary culture of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. He was neither a university poet in the manner of many learned writers nor a wholly court-dependent figure; he was a merchant, a translator, a religious poet, a public panegyrist, a husband and father, and, for a time, a servant of the royal household. His…

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Spirituality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Richard Rowlands
Joshua Sylvester
1550 1640
They overlapped for 56 years (1563–1618). When Joshua Sylvester was born, Richard Rowlands was about 13. Richard Rowlands was about 68 when Joshua Sylvester died.
Richard Rowlands in history Joshua Sylvester in history Years they were given

On the map

About 56 km separate East London, England from Kent, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Richard Rowlands

Joshua Sylvester

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 divine

Richard Rowlands only

rowlands lullaby mother christ infant voice

Joshua Sylvester only

sylvester ubique cosmic bartas life

From the biographies

religious protestant history

Richard Rowlands: london, antwerp, edmund campion, theatrum crudelitatum, catholic exile, christ church oxford, goldsmiths' company, william allen. Joshua Sylvester: merchant adventurer, guillaume de salluste, du bartas, divine weekes and workes, henry iv of france, adrian à saravia, william plumbe, protestant culture.

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.

Lullaby
Richard Rowlands
68% love, divine
Compare
Ubique
Joshua Sylvester

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1564 Shakespeare Born
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

Richard Rowlands

1580 Education at Christ Church, Oxford
1581 Exile due to Religious Beliefs
1592 Publication of 'The First Part of the History of the Life of the Most Noble and Renowned Sir Philip Sidney'
1595 Friendship with Other Exiled Poets
1605 Imprisonment in England
1612 Publication of 'The Second Part of the History of the Life of the Most Noble and Renowned Sir Philip Sidney'
1615 Patronage from the Earl of Southampton
1620 Publication of 'The Life of Sir Philip Sidney'

Joshua Sylvester

1571 Education at King Edward VI School
1574 Apprenticeship in Trade
1590 First Major Publication: Translation of Du Bartas
1590 Friendship with Sir Thomas Lake
1590 Involvement with the Merchant Adventurers' Company
1605 Publication of 'The Divine Weeks'
1610 Publication of 'The Triumph of Death'
1613 Publication of 'The First Book of the Divine Weeks'

Emotional landscapes

Richard Rowlands: Tenderness, Joy, Peace. Joshua Sylvester: Tenderness, Longing, Spirituality.

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