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

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

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 68% Poems 93% Blended 79%
Swap sides Another related pair
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

17 August 1840 – 10 September 1922 (~82)
9 live poems · English

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, born on 17 August 1840 at Petworth in Sussex and dead on 10 September 1922 at Newbuildings Place, his Sussex home, lived a life unusually crowded with contradiction. He was an English gentleman who became one of Victorian Britain’s most persistent critics of empire; a formal, often old-fashioned poet who sought to make verse answer political injustice; a diplomat who abandoned official service i…

“Beauty is the natural gift, to desert man and desert beast, only of peninsular Arabia.”

Neighbourhood: Irish Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Longing
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…

“And as they are of no school they will be fresh, as the old delights of earth are ever fresh.”

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

In time

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Philip Bourke Marston
1840 1922
They overlapped for 38 years (1850–1887). When Philip Bourke Marston was born, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was about 10. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was about 47 when Philip Bourke Marston died.
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in history Philip Bourke Marston in history Years they were given

On the map

About 66 km separate Petworth House, Sussex, England from London, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

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

love life grief beloved woman sorrow loss

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt only

heart self social soul pleasure pity mourning tenant eviction

Philip Bourke Marston only

death world memory beauty suffering pain lover spring queen

From the biographies

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: petworth, newbuildings place, lady anne blunt, the bedouin tribes of the euphrates, a pilgrimage to nejd, crabbet park, arabian horse breeding, stonyhurst college. 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.

He Laments that His Love is Dead
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
90% love, dead, death, spring
Compare
My Love is Dead
Philip Bourke Marston
O fly not, Pleasure
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
86% love, grief
Compare
Sad Songs Remembered
Philip Bourke Marston
O fly not, Pleasure
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
84% love, sorrow, grief
Compare
Not Thou But I
Philip Bourke Marston
O fly not, Pleasure
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
83%
Compare
To a Tune
Philip Bourke Marston
O fly not, Pleasure
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
83% love, grief
Compare
A little time for laughter
Philip Bourke Marston
The Grief of Love
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
83% grief, beloved
Compare
Bereft
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

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

1854 Education at Stonyhurst College
1869 Marriage to Lady Anne Noel
1875 Publication of 'Sonnets and Songs by Proteus'
1881 Publication of 'The Love Sonnets of Proteus'
1883 Critique of British Imperialism
1889 Publication of 'In Vinculis'
1899 Publication of 'The Future of Islam'

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

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: Sorrow, Despair, Longing. Philip Bourke Marston: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.

Skip to main content