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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

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.

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 Carew Thomas Carew

Poet B

John Donne John Donne
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 73% Poems 90% Blended 81%
Swap sides Another related pair
Thomas Carew

Thomas Carew

1595 – 22 March 1640 (~45)
4 live poems · English

Thomas Carew, born in 1595 and buried on 22 March 1640, occupies a distinctive place in English poetry as one of the most accomplished voices of the Caroline court. He is usually grouped with the Cavalier poets, a loose modern designation for writers associated with the court of Charles I, with royalist culture, and with an ideal of elegance, loyalty, sociability, erotic wit, and cultivated pleasure. Yet Carew is mor…

“Though Ben had barrelled up a great deal of knowledge, yet it seems he had not read the Ethics, which, among other Precepts of Morality, forbid Self-commendation.”

Neighbourhood: Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sensuality, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities
John Donne

John Donne

1572 – 31 March 1631 (~59)
40 live poems · English

John Donne was born in London in 1572, probably in January, though the exact day remains uncertain, and he died in London on 31 March 1631. Few English writers have seemed so divided within themselves, or have turned division into such memorable art. He was at once a Catholic child in a Protestant state, an ambitious courtier whose prospects were ruined by love, a husband burdened by debt and bereavement, a poet of e…

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Thomas Carew
John Donne
1572 1640
They overlapped for 37 years (1595–1631). When Thomas Carew was born, John Donne was about 23. Thomas Carew was about 36 when John Donne died.
Thomas Carew in history John Donne in history Years they were given

On the map

About 18 km separate West Wickham, Kent, England from London, England. Both have ground in London.

Thomas Carew

John Donne

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 desire lovers beloved heart death world

Thomas Carew only

mistress stream water river erotic secrecy pleasure cupid moderation

John Donne only

self life power woman social spiritual nature divine religious

From the biographies

social erotic

Thomas Carew: caroline court, cavalier poets, ben jonson, to his inconstant mistress, the spring, a rapture, sir dudley carleton, venice. John Donne: london, catholic, anglican preacher, songs and sonnets, the flea, the sun rising, the canonization, a valediction: forbidding mourning.

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.

To My Inconstant Mistris
Thomas Carew
86% love, desire
Compare
The Message
John Donne
Secrecy in Love Pledged
Thomas Carew
85% love
Compare
The Undertaking
John Donne
To My Inconstant Mistris
Thomas Carew
84% love, desire
Compare
Woman's Constancy
John Donne
To My Inconstant Mistris
Thomas Carew
83% love, desire
Compare
The Apparition
John Donne
Secrecy in Love Pledged
Thomas Carew
82% love, lovers, world
Compare
The Canonization
John Donne
To My Inconstant Mistris
Thomas Carew
82% love, desire
Compare
Batter my heart, three-person'd God
John Donne

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

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
1616 Death of William Shakespeare

Thomas Carew

1608 Education at Merton College, Oxford
1613 Embassy to Venice
1614 Return to England and Courtly Life
1630 Appointment as Gentleman of the Privy Chamber
1635 Involvement in Literary Circles
1637 Literary Patronage from Charles I
1640 Death of Thomas Carew
1640 Publication of 'Poems' Collection

John Donne

1593 Brother Henry's Imprisonment and Death
1610 Publication of 'Pseudo-Martyr'
1611 Writing the Anniversaries for Elizabeth Drury
1615 Ordination as Anglican Priest
1617 Death of Wife Anne More
1621 Appointment as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral
1623 Severe Illness and 'Devotions upon Emergent Occasions'
1631 Composition of 'Death's Duel'

Emotional landscapes

Thomas Carew: Longing, Sensuality, Tenderness. John Donne: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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