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

John Bartlet John Bartlet

Poet B

Thomas Campion Thomas Campion
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 82% Poems 76% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Bartlet

John Bartlet

c. 1585 – c. 1620 (~35)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight years of the Elizabethan era, as the golden age of English poetry shimmered into the Jacobean dawn, a quiet but gifted composer emerged whose voice—though faint in the historical record—resonates with a rare and haunting beauty. John Bartlet, active roughly between 1585 and 1620, remains one of the most enigmatic figures of early English secular music. His life is shrouded in mystery, his dates approx…

“The poorness of my merit holds least proportion with the largeness of your grace, and my utmost desert can reach no further than humbly to acknowledge it.”

Neighbourhood: Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow
Thomas Campion

Thomas Campion

12 February 1567 – 1 March 1620 (~53)
2 live poems · English

In the twilight of the Elizabethan era, when the English language was still finding its lyrical wings, when Shakespeare’s quill was etching immortality into parchment and the lute still whispered through candlelit chambers, there walked a man whose artistry shimmered with quiet brilliance — Thomas Campion. Born in 1567, dead by 1620, Campion lived a life that spanned the golden age of English poetry and music, yet hi…

“A poet is not born, but made.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Poet-Musicians, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Tenderness, Peace

In time

John Bartlet
Thomas Campion
1567 1620
They overlapped for 36 years (1585–1620). When John Bartlet was born, Thomas Campion was about 18.

On the map

About 2 km separate London, England from St. Andrew Holborn, London, England. Both have ground in London.

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

From the biographies

a booke of ayres music songs lute composer

John Bartlet: elizabethan era, jacobean dawn, a booke of ayres, thomas morley, john dowland, thomas campion, lute song, lyric poetry. Thomas Campion: st. andrew holborn, merchant taylors' school, peterhouse, cambridge, gray's inn, the triumphs of oriana, rose-cheeked laura, come, a booke of ayres, observations in the art of english poesie.

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.

Whither runeth my sweethart
John Bartlet
70% beloved
Compare
There Is a Garden in Her Face
Thomas Campion
When from my love I looked for love
John Bartlet
70% love, beloved
Compare
There Is a Garden in Her Face
Thomas Campion
Whither runeth my sweethart
John Bartlet
67%
Compare
Jack and Joan
Thomas Campion

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Bartlet: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow. Thomas Campion: Joy, Tenderness, Peace.

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