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

Anne Bradstreet Anne Bradstreet

Poet B

Anthony Munday Anthony Munday
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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 60% Poems 74% Blended 66%
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…

“Sweet words are like honey, a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Colonial American Poets, Devotional Poets, Restoration Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow
Listen Timeline Affinities
Anthony Munday

Anthony Munday

c. 13 October 1560 – 10 August 1633 (~73)
2 live poems · English

In the bustling, smoke-hung streets of Elizabethan London, where the clatter of hooves mingled with the cries of hawkers and the distant peal of church bells, a young man of quick wit and tireless pen emerged from the shadows of obscurity to become one of the most versatile, if underappreciated, literary figures of his age. Anthony Munday—born circa 1560, died in 1633—was not merely a poet or playwright, but a litera…

“I rest, right honourable, on your clemency to amend my errors committed so unskilfully.”

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

In time

Anne Bradstreet
Anthony Munday
1560 1672
They overlapped for 22 years (1612–1633). When Anne Bradstreet was born, Anthony Munday was about 52. Anne Bradstreet was about 21 when Anthony Munday died.
Anne Bradstreet in history Anthony Munday in history Years they were given

On the map

About 320 km separate Northumbria, England from City of London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Anne Bradstreet

Anthony Munday

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

Anne Bradstreet only

life puritan divine husband heart absence death spiritual faith marriage domestic return

Anthony Munday only

desire beauty imagination dream memory deceit stole

From the biographies

Anne Bradstreet: northampton, puritan, the tenth muse, simon bradstreet, the prologue, john winthrop, emmanuel college, the four monarchies. Anthony Munday: elizabethan london, sir francis walsingham, the english romayne lyfe, john a kent and john a cumber, metropolis coronata, the triumphs of reunited britannia, the downfall and the death of robert earl of huntington, robin hood.

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.

A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment
Anne Bradstreet
70%
Compare
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
In my Solitary houres in my dear husband his Absence
Anne Bradstreet
68%
Compare
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
What God is like to him I serve
Anne Bradstreet
68%
Compare
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
Upon my Son Samuel his goeing for England
Anne Bradstreet
66%
Compare
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
Before the Birth of one of her Children
Anne Bradstreet
65% memory
Compare
Beauty sat bathing by a spring
Anthony Munday
A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment
Anne Bradstreet
63%
Compare
You stole my love
Anthony Munday

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'

Anthony Munday

1567 Apprenticeship to John Allde
1586 Publication of 'The Mirror of Mutability'
1590 Involvement in Civic Pageantry
1600 Publication of 'The First Part of the History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1600 Publication of 'The History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1600 Publication of 'The Second Part of the History of Sir John Oldcastle'
1601 Publication of 'The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon'
1603 Involvement in the Publication of 'The Book of Sir Thomas More'

Emotional landscapes

Anne Bradstreet: Longing, Spirituality, Sorrow. Anthony Munday: Longing, Sorrow, Anger.

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