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 Wilmot John Wilmot

Poet B

Martin Peerson Martin Peerson
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
John Wilmot

John Wilmot

1 April 1647 – 26 July 1680 (~33)
3 live poems · English

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, was born on 1 April 1647 at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire and died on 26 July 1680 at Woodstock Park, aged only thirty-three. Few English poets have acquired a reputation so vivid, so unstable, and so inseparable from scandal. Rochester has been remembered as a court rake, libertine, seducer, duelist, drunkard, satirist, skeptic, naval volunteer, theatrical patron, and, in the fi…

“There's not a thing on Earth, that I can name, So foolish, and so false, as common fame.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Decadent Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Martin Peerson

Martin Peerson

c. 1571 – 16 January 1651 (~80)
1 live poem · English

In the twilight years of Elizabeth I's reign and throughout the tumultuous early decades of the seventeenth century, when England stood at the crossroads between medieval traditions and modern innovations, one composer quietly crafted some of the most exquisite musical settings of poetry ever written. Martin Peerson, born around 1571 and dying in 1651, lived through one of the most extraordinary periods in English cu…

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Despair

In time

John Wilmot
Martin Peerson
1571 1680
They overlapped for 5 years (1647–1651). When John Wilmot was born, Martin Peerson was about 76. John Wilmot was about 4 when Martin Peerson died.

On the map

About 128 km separate Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire, England from March, Cambridgeshire, 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.

Shared

From the biographies

John Wilmot: ditchley park, oxfordshire, second earl of rochester, charles ii, elizabeth malet, merry gang, naval volunteer, theatrical patron. Martin Peerson: march, cambridgeshire, st. paul's cathedral, william byrd, thomas tallis, christopher marlowe, william shakespeare, mottects or grave chamber musique.

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.

Love and Life
John Wilmot
78% love
Compare
The spring of joy is dry
Martin Peerson
On Mistress Willis
John Wilmot
62%
Compare
The spring of joy is dry
Martin Peerson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

John Wilmot: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Martin Peerson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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