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

Sir John Suckling Sir John Suckling

Poet B

Alexander Brome Alexander Brome
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 74% Poems 84% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Sir John Suckling

Sir John Suckling

10 February 1609 – 1642 (~33)
2 live poems · English

Sir John Suckling stands as one of the most vivid and enigmatic figures of the seventeenth century, a man whose life was lived with the same flamboyant intensity that characterized his verse. Born in 1609 and dying under mysterious circumstances in 1642, Suckling's brief thirty-three years encapsulate the glittering excess and underlying tragedy of the Caroline era. He is remembered today as the quintessential Cavali…

“Horseley air did excel the waters of the Bath, just so much as love is a more noble disease than the pox.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Longing, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
Alexander Brome

Alexander Brome

1620 – 30 June 1666 (~46)
2 live poems · English

Alexander Brome, born in 1620 and dead on 30 June 1666, belongs to that lively but unevenly remembered company of seventeenth-century English writers whose poems were made for circulation, sociability, controversy, and song. He was a lawyer by profession, a Royalist by conviction, an editor and occasional dramatist by literary activity, and, above all, a writer of satirical and convivial verse. His name is not common…

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Light Verse Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Irony, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Sir John Suckling
Alexander Brome
1609 1666
They overlapped for 23 years (1620–1642). When Alexander Brome was born, Sir John Suckling was about 11. Alexander Brome was about 22 when Sir John Suckling died.
Sir John Suckling in history Alexander Brome in history Years they were given

On the map

About 171 km separate Whitton, Middlesex, England from Evershot, Dorset, England. Both have ground in London.

Sir John Suckling

Alexander Brome

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 lover debt social desire life

Sir John Suckling only

cavalier pale suffering beloved woman pleasure freedom

Alexander Brome only

brome drink restoration king trade riches wine

From the biographies

Sir John Suckling: whitton, cavalier poet, king charles i, fragmenta aurea, trinity college cambridge, gray's inn, first bishops' war, the ballad of a wedding. Alexander Brome: royalist, london, dorset, the cunning lovers, english anacreon, civil war, satirical verse, wine.

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 Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
79% love, debt, social, desire
Compare
The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
79% lover, love
Compare
The Mad Lover
Alexander Brome
Love and Debt Alike Troublesome
Sir John Suckling
76% social
Compare
A Catch
Alexander Brome
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Sir John Suckling
69%
Compare
A Catch
Alexander Brome

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1620 Mayflower Carries the Pilgrims to New England
1620 Sailing of the Mayflower
1620 The Mayflower Compact is Signed
1623 Publication of 'The First Folio' of William Shakespeare (1623)
1623 The Miraculous Preservation of the First Folio
1634 Publication of 'Castara'
1640 Publication of 'Poems' Collection
1642 English Civil War Begins

Sir John Suckling

1623 Education at Trinity College, Cambridge
1627 Inheritance of Wealth and Estate
1630 Friendship with Sir Robert Sidney
1630 Involvement in the Court of Charles I
1638 Publication of 'Aglaura'
1640 Return to England from France
1642 Exile in France
1646 Publication of 'The Session of the Poets'

Alexander Brome

1640 Relocation to London for Legal Training
1642 Involvement in Royalist Activities
1648 Admission to Gray's Inn
1653 First Major Publication of Poetry
1655 Legal Career in the Lord Mayor's Court
1661 Publication of 'The Songs and Poems of Alexander Brome'
1663 Publication of 'The Poems of Alexander Brome'
1666 Death of Alexander Brome

Emotional landscapes

Sir John Suckling: Irony, Longing, Sorrow. Alexander Brome: Joy, Irony, Tenderness.

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