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

Charles Frederick White Charles Frederick White

Poet B

Benjamin Griffith Brawley Benjamin Griffith Brawley
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 79% Poems 85% Blended 82%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charles Frederick White

Charles Frederick White

1876 – 1955 (~79)
2 live poems · English

Born in 1876 amid the lingering shadows of slavery in Tennessee, Charles Frederick White entered a world still scarred by the chains his parents had worn. The oldest of ten children born to formerly enslaved parents, he carried the weight of their hard-won freedom from the very beginning. His family soon migrated northward to Springfield, Illinois, seeking better opportunities in a state that had once sheltered Abrah…

“The author's own experience is here but briefly told and these writings are based upon actual facts”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Anger, Sorrow, Despair
Listen Timeline Affinities
Benjamin Griffith Brawley

Benjamin Griffith Brawley

22 April 1882 – 1 February 1939 (~57)
2 live poems · English

Benjamin Griffith Brawley entered the world on April 22, 1882, in Columbia, South Carolina, during a time when the South was still grappling with the aftershocks of Reconstruction and the hardening grip of Jim Crow. The second eldest of nine children born to the Reverend Edward McKnight Brawley and Margaret Saphronia Dickerson Brawley, he grew up in a household that prized education, faith, and quiet dignity amid rac…

“Literature should be not only history but prophecy, not only the record of our striving but also the mirror of our hopes and dreams. The Negro himself is the supreme challenge to American literature.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Love Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

Charles Frederick White
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
1876 1955
They overlapped for 58 years (1882–1939). When Benjamin Griffith Brawley was born, Charles Frederick White was about 6. Charles Frederick White was about 63 when Benjamin Griffith Brawley died.
Charles Frederick White in history Benjamin Griffith Brawley in history Years they were given

On the map

About 517 km separate Tennessee, USA from Columbia, South Carolina, USA. Shared ground: United States.

Charles Frederick White

Benjamin Griffith Brawley

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 racial

Charles Frederick White only

justice protest soldier plea voice nation freedom suffering

Benjamin Griffith Brawley only

world fields history love violence

From the biographies

Charles Frederick White: tennessee, springfield, plea of the negro soldier, spanish-american war, eighth illinois national guard, williston seminary, who's who in philadelphia, joseph sawyer. Benjamin Griffith Brawley: columbia, south carolina, edward mcknight brawley, morehouse college, the atheneum, a prayer, the slaver, freedom on the free, the education.

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.

Meditations of a Negro's Mind, I
Charles Frederick White
80% racial
Compare
The Plan
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
Plea of the Negro Soldier
Charles Frederick White
79%
Compare
The Peon's Child
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
Meditations of a Negro's Mind, I
Charles Frederick White
76%
Compare
The Peon's Child
Benjamin Griffith Brawley
Plea of the Negro Soldier
Charles Frederick White
74% life
Compare
The Plan
Benjamin Griffith Brawley

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

1882 Nietzsche Declares 'God is Dead'
1882 Robert Koch Discovers the Tuberculosis Bacillus
1883 Emil Christian Hansen Isolates a Pure Yeast Culture at Carlsberg
1883 Friedrich Nietzsche Publishes 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'
1883 Publication of 'Treasure Island'
1884 Oxford English Dictionary Begins Publication
1884 Publication of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'
1885 Pasteur Successfully Tests the Rabies Vaccine

Charles Frederick White

1880 Family Migration to Springfield, Illinois
1891 Withdrawal from School
1900 Marriage to Mary White
1908 Publication of 'Plea of the Negro Soldier and a Hundred Other Poems'
1915 Recognition by the NAACP
1920 Relocation to Chicago
1944 Publication of 'The Negro Soldier'

Benjamin Griffith Brawley

1895 Early Education in Petersburg
1904 Graduation from Howard University
1906 Marriage to Mary E. Brawley
1919 Publication of 'The Negro in Literature and Art'
1920 Founding of the Atlanta University Press
1930 Publication of 'A History of the Negro in America'
1935 Publication of 'The Poetry of the Negro'
1939 Death of Benjamin Griffith Brawley

Emotional landscapes

Charles Frederick White: Anger, Sorrow, Despair. Benjamin Griffith Brawley: Spirituality, Wonder, Longing.

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