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 Webster John Webster

Poet B

Ben Jonson Ben Jonson
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 70% Blended 70%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Webster

John Webster

c. 1580 – c. 1632 (~52)
1 live poem · English

John Webster, born around 1580 and probably dead by about 1632, occupies a singular place in English Renaissance drama. He is remembered above all as the author of The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, tragedies whose violent plots, dense imagery, and moral unease have made them enduring fixtures of the theatrical canon. Yet the familiar image of Webster as a solitary poet of skulls, stranglings, poison, and corr…

“A great part of the grace of this, I confess, lay in action; yet can no action ever be gracious, where the decency of the language, and ingenious structure of the scene, arrive not to make up a perfect harmony.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
Listen Timeline Affinities
Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

c. 11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637 (~65)
5 live poems · English

Ben Jonson, baptized on 11 June 1572 and probably born on or very near that date, entered the world in Westminster at a moment when London’s theatrical culture was beginning to assume the force and richness that would make the English Renaissance famous. He died on 6 August 1637, having become, in the course of sixty-five turbulent years, England’s most formidable classical dramatist, one of its finest lyric poets, a…

“Truth is the trial of itself, and needs no other touch to prove it.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Dramatic Poets, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

John Webster
Ben Jonson
1572 1637
They overlapped for 53 years (1580–1632). When John Webster was born, Ben Jonson was about 8. Ben Jonson was about 60 when John Webster died.
John Webster in history Ben Jonson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 0 km separate London, England from Westminster, London, England. Both have ground in London.

John Webster

Ben Jonson

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.

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

John Webster only

webster life vanitas vanitatum vanity flowers death existence

Ben Jonson only

desire love kiss power celia wreath breath beloved drink persuasion connection tension

From the biographies

london play social

John Webster: the white devil, the duchess of malfi, london, merchant taylors' company, thomas dekker, jacobean tragedy, red bull theatre, blackfriars theatre. Ben Jonson: westminster, william camden, on my first son, on my first daughter, every man in his humour, the isle of dogs, gabriel spencer, war of the theatres.

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.

Vanitas Vanitatum
John Webster
74%
Compare
To Celia
Ben Jonson
Vanitas Vanitatum
John Webster
71%
Compare
A Hymne to God the Father
Ben Jonson
Vanitas Vanitatum
John Webster
66%
Compare
The Dreame
Ben Jonson
Vanitas Vanitatum
John Webster
66%
Compare
That Women Are but Mens Shaddowes
Ben Jonson
Vanitas Vanitatum
John Webster
58%
Compare
Begging Another
Ben Jonson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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
1615 Cervantes publishes the second part of Don Quixote

John Webster

1590 Education at Merchant Taylors' School
1598 Admission to the Middle Temple
1602 Collaboration with Philip Henslowe
1604 Collaboration with Thomas Dekker
1612 Publication of The White Devil
1620 Death of Father
1623 Publication of The Duchess of Malfi
1625 Involvement with the King's Men

Ben Jonson

1580 Jonson's Education at Westminster School
1597 Imprisonment for 'The Isle of Dogs'
1598 Duel with Gabriel Spencer
1598 Success of 'Every Man in His Humour'
1606 Publication of 'Volpone'
1610 Publication of 'The Alchemist'
1614 Publication of 'Bartholomew Fair'
1616 Appointment as Poet Laureate

Emotional landscapes

John Webster: Sorrow, Despair, Irony. Ben Jonson: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality.

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