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 Dowland John Dowland

Poet B

William Barley William Barley
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 76% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
John Dowland

John Dowland

c. 1563 – 20 February 1626 (~63)
1 live poem · English

In the twilight of the Renaissance, when the courts of Europe shimmered with velvet and candlelight, and the air hummed with lute strings and whispered sonnets, there walked a man whose music seemed spun from moonlight and sorrow. John Dowland—composer, lutenist, poet of the fretboard—was not merely a musician of his age; he was its emotional cartographer, mapping the contours of longing, loss, and unrequited love wi…

“Plato defines melody to consist of harmony, number and words: harmony naked of itself, words the ornament of harmony, number the common friend and uniter of them both.”

Neighbourhood: Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Despair, Sorrow, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
William Barley

William Barley

c. 1565 – 1614 (~49)
1 live poem · English

In the bustling, ink-stained alleys of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean London, where the clatter of printing presses mingled with the cries of street hawkers and the murmur of poets reciting in tavern corners, there lived a man whose name is rarely whispered in the same breath as Shakespeare, Dowland, or Morley — yet whose fingerprints are pressed indelibly into the pages of English literary and musical history.…

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

In time

John Dowland
William Barley
1563 1626
They overlapped for 50 years (1565–1614). When William Barley was born, John Dowland was about 2. John Dowland was about 51 when William Barley died.
John Dowland in history William Barley in history Years they were given

On the map

About 134 km separate Westminster, London, England from Warwickshire, England. Both have ground in England and London.

John Dowland

William Barley

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

sorrow

John Dowland only

tears despair world flow melancholy hope spiritual lament

William Barley only

barley music soul voice voices fate truth

From the biographies

london music composer

John Dowland: london, paris, christian iv of denmark, first booke of songes or ayres, flow, my tears, lachrimae, a pilgrimes solace, roman catholicism. William Barley: elizabethan london, john dowland, the pathway to music, a new booke of tabliture, the whole booke of psalmes, a new book of new madrigals and songs, metrical psalms, thomas morley.

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.

Flow, my tears
John Dowland
81% sorrow
Compare
Short is my rest
William Barley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1565 Manila Galleon Trade Begins
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

John Dowland

1594 Marriage to Anne Dowland
1597 Publication of 'First Booke of Songs or Ayres'
1598 Travel to France and Italy
1600 Friendship with Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
1600 Publication of 'The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres'
1606 Appointment as Lutenist to the English Court
1606 Publication of 'A Pilgrimes Solace'
1620 Publication of 'The Third and Last Booke of Songs or Ayres'

William Barley

1580 Apprenticeship Begins for William Barley
1596 Publication of 'A New Book of Tablature'
1596 Publication of 'The First Booke of Songes'
1600 Involvement in the Stationers' Company
1605 Publication of 'The Second Booke of Songes'
1607 Publication of 'The Third Booke of Songes'
1610 Publication of 'The Fourth Booke of Songes'
1614 Death of William Barley

Emotional landscapes

John Dowland: Despair, Sorrow, Longing. William Barley: Sorrow, Despair, Longing.

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