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

Thomas Weelkes Thomas Weelkes

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.

Kindred spirits
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 78% Blended 78%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Weelkes

Thomas Weelkes

25 October 1576 – November 1623 (~47)
2 live poems · English

In the golden twilight of the English Renaissance, when the echoes of Shakespeare's verse still rang through London's theaters and the madrigal reached its most exquisite flowering, Thomas Weelkes emerged as one of the most distinctive and emotionally powerful composers of his generation. Born around 1576 and dying in 1623, Weelkes lived through one of the most extraordinary periods in English cultural history, creat…

“Many of us musicians think it as much praise to be somewhat more than musicians, as it is for gold to be somewhat more than gold.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Longing, Irony, Sensuality
Listen Timeline Affinities
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
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Thomas Weelkes
Martin Peerson
1571 1651
They overlapped for 48 years (1576–1623). When Thomas Weelkes was born, Martin Peerson was about 5. Martin Peerson was about 52 when Thomas Weelkes died.
Thomas Weelkes in history Martin Peerson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 162 km separate Elstead, Surrey, England from March, Cambridgeshire, England. Both have ground in England.

Thomas Weelkes

Martin Peerson

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

Thomas Weelkes only

desire beauty decay mistress cold winter social marriage widow

Martin Peerson only

return spring fate hope reunion lovers

From the biographies

christopher marlowe music compositions composer cathedral sacred

Thomas Weelkes: elstead, winchester college, chichester cathedral, as vesta was from latmos hill descending, the triumphes of oriana, madrigals to 3, 4, 5, & 6 voyces, ayeres or phantasticke spirites, edmund spenser. 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.

The gods have heard my vows
Thomas Weelkes
76% love
Compare
The spring of joy is dry
Martin Peerson
Some men desire spouses
Thomas Weelkes
67%
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.

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

Thomas Weelkes

1598 Appointment as Organist in Winchester
1600 Publication of 'The First Book of Madrigals'
1602 Marriage to Anne Weelkes
1608 Publication of 'The Second Book of Madrigals'
1609 Appointment as Organist at Chichester Cathedral
1613 Publication of 'The Third Book of Madrigals'
1615 Death of Weelkes's Wife
1619 Publication of 'The Fourth Book of Madrigals'

Martin Peerson

1590 Education in Music and Poetry
1600 Marriage to Elizabeth
1613 Publication of 'The First Book of Songs and Ayres'
1615 Patronage by Sir Robert Sidney
1620 Publication of 'The Second Book of Songs and Ayres'
1630 Publication of 'The Third Book of Songs and Ayres'
1635 Death of His Wife Elizabeth
1640 Publication of 'The Fourth Book of Songs and Ayres'

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Weelkes: Longing, Irony, Sensuality. Martin Peerson: Sorrow, Longing, Despair.

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