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.

I want a simpler life, without the hassle of being online. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the life I 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

Anne Bradstreet Anne Bradstreet

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 69% Poems 84% Blended 76%
Swap sides Another related pair
Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet

1612 – 16 September 1672 (~60)
5 live poems · English

Anne Bradstreet was born Anne Dudley in 1612 in Northampton, England, into a family unusually well positioned to cultivate both religious seriousness and intellectual ambition. Her precise birth date is uncertain, though she was baptized on March 20, 1612. She entered the world during the reign of James I, in an England defined by political conflict, religious controversy, expanding trade, and the vigorous literary a…

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Colonial American Poets, Devotional Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
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…

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

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

In time

Anne Bradstreet
John Donne
1572 1672
They overlapped for 20 years (1612–1631). When Anne Bradstreet was born, John Donne was about 40. Anne Bradstreet was about 19 when John Donne died.
Anne Bradstreet in history John Donne in history Years they were given

On the map

About 321 km separate Northumbria, England from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Anne Bradstreet

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

life love divine heart death spiritual

Anne Bradstreet only

puritan husband absence faith marriage domestic return separation union children

John Donne only

beloved self world desire lovers power woman social nature religious

From the biographies

religious

Anne Bradstreet: northampton, puritan, the tenth muse, simon bradstreet, the prologue, john winthrop, emmanuel college, the four monarchies. 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.

What God is like to him I serve
Anne Bradstreet
80% religious, divine, spiritual
Compare
Batter my heart, three-person'd God
John Donne
A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment
Anne Bradstreet
78% heart
Compare
The Blossome
John Donne
What God is like to him I serve
Anne Bradstreet
77% life, divine
Compare
A Hymn to God the Father
John Donne
A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment
Anne Bradstreet
77%
Compare
The Sun Rising
John Donne
In my Solitary houres in my dear husband his Absence
Anne Bradstreet
77% divine, faith, life
Compare
A Hymn to God the Father
John Donne
In my Solitary houres in my dear husband his Absence
Anne Bradstreet
76% divine, spiritual, love, heart
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.

1615 Cervantes publishes the second part of Don Quixote
1616 Death of William Shakespeare
1619 First Africans Arrive in Virginia
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

Anne Bradstreet

1628 Conversion to Puritanism
1628 Marriage of Anne Dudley to Simon Bradstreet
1633 Birth of Anne Bradstreet's First Child
1640 Involvement in the Massachusetts Bay Colony's Social Life
1642 Death of Anne Bradstreet's Father
1650 Publication of 'The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America'
1660 Death of Anne Bradstreet's Mother
1678 Publication of 'Several Poems Compiled with Great Care'

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

Anne Bradstreet: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. John Donne: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

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