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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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 Lydgate John Lydgate

Poet B

Richard Edwardes Richard Edwardes
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 77% Blended 77%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Lydgate

John Lydgate

c. 1370 – c. 1450 (~80)
1 live poem · English

John Lydgate stands as one of the most remarkable figures in the rich tapestry of late medieval English literature—a Benedictine monk whose pen produced nearly 150,000 lines of verse, rivaling the output of any poet before or since in sheer volume and versatility. Born around 1370 in the quiet Suffolk village of Lidgate, just a short distance from the magnificent Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds, Lydgate lived th…

“All is not golde that outward shewith bright.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Medieval Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Longing, Peace
Richard Edwardes

Richard Edwardes

c. 1525 – 31 October 1566 (~41)
2 live poems · English

Richard Edwardes, the Tudor poet, playwright, and composer whose brief life illuminated the dawn of Elizabethan drama and lyric verse, stands as a captivating figure in the rich literary heritage of sixteenth-century England. Born around 1523 in the county of Somerset—likely in the parish of North Petherton—he entered the world during the tumultuous reign of Henry VIII, a time when the English court pulsed with ambit…

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

In time

John Lydgate
Richard Edwardes
1370 1566
Their lives did not overlap. 75 years separate the earlier death from the later birth.

On the map

About 273 km separate Lidgate, Suffolk, England from Somerset, England. Both have ground in England.

Themes they return to

Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.

No overlapping top terms in the poem critiques — any kinship may sit in mood rather than vocabulary.

John Lydgate only

Richard Edwardes only

From the biographies

John Lydgate: lidgate, bury st edmunds, geoffrey chaucer, the testament, the troy book, the siege of thebes, the fall of princes, henry v. Richard Edwardes: somerset, north petherton, elizabethan drama, the paradise of dainty devices, george etheridge, gentleman of the chapel royal, damon and pithias, tragi-comedy.

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.

Vox ultima Crucis
John Lydgate
74%
Compare
A Song to the Lute in Musicke
Richard Edwardes
Vox ultima Crucis
John Lydgate
72%
Compare
In Commendation of Musick
Richard Edwardes

The world around them

Emotional landscapes

John Lydgate: Spirituality, Longing, Peace. Richard Edwardes: Joy, Spirituality, Peace.

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