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

Anthony Munday Anthony Munday

Poet B

John Bartlet John Bartlet
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 67% Poems 87% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Anthony Munday

Anthony Munday

c. 13 October 1560 – 10 August 1633 (~73)
2 live poems · English

In the bustling, smoke-hung streets of Elizabethan London, where the clatter of hooves mingled with the cries of hawkers and the distant peal of church bells, a young man of quick wit and tireless pen emerged from the shadows of obscurity to become one of the most versatile, if underappreciated, literary figures of his age. Anthony Munday—born circa 1560, died in 1633—was not merely a poet or playwright, but a litera…

“I rest, right honourable, on your clemency to amend my errors committed so unskilfully.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Anger
Listen Timeline Affinities
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
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Anthony Munday
John Bartlet
1560 1633
They overlapped for 36 years (1585–1620). When John Bartlet was born, Anthony Munday was about 25. Anthony Munday was about 60 when John Bartlet died.
Anthony Munday in history John Bartlet in history Years they were given

On the map

About 3 km separate City of London, England from London, England. Both have ground in London.

Anthony Munday

John Bartlet

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

Anthony Munday only

desire beauty imagination dream memory deceit stole

John Bartlet only

beloved lover pursuit music betrayal expectation

From the biographies

Anthony Munday: elizabethan london, sir francis walsingham, the english romayne lyfe, john a kent and john a cumber, metropolis coronata, the triumphs of reunited britannia, the downfall and the death of robert earl of huntington, robin hood. John Bartlet: elizabethan era, jacobean dawn, a booke of ayres, thomas morley, john dowland, thomas campion, lute song, lyric poetry.

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.

You stole my love
Anthony Munday
84% love
Compare
When from my love I looked for love
John Bartlet
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
76%
Compare
Whither runeth my sweethart
John Bartlet
You stole my love
Anthony Munday
76%
Compare
Whither runeth my sweethart
John Bartlet
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
73%
Compare
When from my love I looked for love
John Bartlet

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

Anthony Munday

1567 Apprenticeship to John Allde
1586 Publication of 'The Mirror of Mutability'
1590 Involvement in Civic Pageantry
1600 Publication of 'The First Part of the History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1600 Publication of 'The History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1600 Publication of 'The Second Part of the History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1601 Publication of 'The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon'
1603 Involvement in the Publication of 'The Book of Sir Thomas More'

John Bartlet

1600 Possible Training in Choral Tradition
1606 Publication of A Booke of Ayres
1610 Active in London’s Musical Scene
1610 Cultural Context of Early 17th Century England
1610 Influence of the Elizabethan Musical Tradition
1615 Collaboration with Contemporary Poets
1615 Participation in Musical Gatherings
1620 Legacy of Emotional Depth in Music

Emotional landscapes

Anthony Munday: Longing, Sorrow, Anger. John Bartlet: Longing, Tenderness, Sorrow.

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