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

Arthur O'Shaughnessy Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Poet B

Philip Bourke Marston Philip Bourke Marston
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 77% Poems 93% Blended 84%
Swap sides Another related pair
Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Arthur O'Shaughnessy

14 March 1844 – 30 January 1881 (~37)
20 live poems · English

Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy was born in London on 14 March 1844 and died there on 30 January 1881, at the age of thirty-six. His life was brief, financially constrained, and repeatedly shadowed by bereavement, yet it produced a body of verse whose finest passages have retained an unusual power. He belongs to that fertile, sometimes neglected region of Victorian poetry situated between the late Romantics, the P…

“My artistic object is gained if, in them, I have kept strictly within the lines assigned to the sculptor’s art.”

Neighbourhood: Decadent Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Symbolist Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Philip Bourke Marston

Philip Bourke Marston

13 August 1850 – 13 February 1887 (~37)
22 live poems · English

Philip Bourke Marston was born in London on 13 August 1850 and died there on 13 February 1887, only thirty-six years later. His short life was shaped by an unusually concentrated mixture of literary privilege, physical disability, bereavement, emotional intensity, and artistic determination. During his lifetime he was admired by prominent writers, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, and was known in literary circle…

“It seems to me this perfect poem is possessed by the melancholy yet tender music of winds sighing at twilight, in some churchyard, through old trees that watch beside silent graves.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Arthur O'Shaughnessy
Philip Bourke Marston
1844 1887
They overlapped for 32 years (1850–1881). When Philip Bourke Marston was born, Arthur O'Shaughnessy was about 6. Philip Bourke Marston was about 31 when Arthur O'Shaughnessy died.
Arthur O'Shaughnessy in history Philip Bourke Marston in history Years they were given

On the map

About 12 km separate Ealing, London, England from London, England. Both have ground in London.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Philip Bourke Marston

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 world beauty death beloved memory grief woman

Arthur O'Shaughnessy only

self desire bird tomb flowers loves summer

Philip Bourke Marston only

loss suffering pain lover sorrow spring queen

From the biographies

Arthur O'Shaughnessy: victorian london, irish descent, epic of women, lays of france, dante gabriel rossetti, pre-raphaelite movement, albert günther, eleanor marston. Philip Bourke Marston: london, john westland marston, algernon charles swinburne, song-tide and other poems, all in all, blindness, victorian poetry, pre-raphaelite.

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.

Love After Death
Arthur O'Shaughnessy
87% love, death, life, grief
Compare
A Year Ago
Philip Bourke Marston
A Life-Tomb
Arthur O'Shaughnessy
86% life, beloved, love, grief
Compare
A Year Ago
Philip Bourke Marston
Love After Death
Arthur O'Shaughnessy
85% love, death, life, grief
Compare
Not Thou But I
Philip Bourke Marston
Love After Death
Arthur O'Shaughnessy
85% love, death, life, grief
Compare
A little time for laughter
Philip Bourke Marston
Love After Death
Arthur O'Shaughnessy
84% love, death, life
Compare
Changeless
Philip Bourke Marston
Love After Death
Arthur O'Shaughnessy
84% love, grief
Compare
Sad Songs Remembered
Philip Bourke Marston

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1850 Publication of 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'
1851 Publication of Moby-Dick
1854 John Snow Traces the Broad Street Pump
1854 Publication of 'Walden'
1856 Invention of the Bessemer Process for Mass Steel Production
1856 Mauveine Synthetic Dye Invention
1856 Perkin's Accidental Discovery of Mauveine
1857 Pasteur Demonstrates the Biological Basis of Fermentation

Arthur O'Shaughnessy

1865 Friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1870 Friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1870 Publication of 'Epic of Women'
1874 Publication of 'Music and Moonlight'
1875 Marriage to Mary O'Shaughnessy
1876 Publication of 'The Garden of Souls'
1881 Posthumous Recognition
1881 Publication of 'The Garden of Dreams'

Philip Bourke Marston

1853 Early Education and Literary Influence of Philip Bourke Marston
1870 Engagement to Mary Nesbit
1871 Publication of 'Song-Tide and Other Poems'
1873 Loss of Vision
1875 Publication of 'All in All'
1883 Death of Philip Bourke Marston's Father
1887 Final Collection 'The Last Poems'
1888 Publication of Posthumous Works

Emotional landscapes

Arthur O'Shaughnessy: Longing, Sorrow, Despair. Philip Bourke Marston: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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