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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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

Stephen Collins Foster Stephen Collins Foster

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.

Strongly related
Their work already rhymes in the catalogue. The rest of this page is the story around that rhyme.
Biography 60% Blended 60%
Swap sides Another related pair
Stephen Collins Foster

Stephen Collins Foster

4 July 1826 – 13 January 1864 (~38)
1 live poem · English

On a steamy July day in 1864, a man stumbled and fell in his dingy room at the North American Hotel on the Bowery in New York City. When help finally arrived, Stephen Collins Foster lay bleeding, having struck his head on a washbasin. In his pockets, rescuers found a purse containing thirty-eight cents and a scrap of paper bearing the words "dear friends and gentle hearts." Three days later, on January 13, 1864, Fost…

“I have done a great deal to build up a taste for the Ethiopian songs among refined people by making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.”

Neighbourhood: American Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Hymn Writers, Poet-Musicians
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder
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…

“I want to tell them of what the flowers talk about when the garden is very still.”

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

In time

Stephen Collins Foster
Philip Bourke Marston
1826 1887
They overlapped for 15 years (1850–1864). When Philip Bourke Marston was born, Stephen Collins Foster was about 24. Philip Bourke Marston was about 14 when Stephen Collins Foster died.
Stephen Collins Foster in history Philip Bourke Marston in history Years they were given

On the map

About 5,980 km separate Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA from London, England. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Stephen Collins Foster

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 world beauty

Stephen Collins Foster only

dreamer presence dream

Philip Bourke Marston only

love beloved grief death memory loss suffering pain lover sorrow spring queen

From the biographies

Stephen Collins Foster: lawrenceville pennsylvania, oh! susanna, my old kentucky home, old folks at home, camptown races, blackface minstrelsy, bellevue hospital, jane denny mcdowell. 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.

Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster
75%
Compare
To Sleep
Philip Bourke Marston
Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster
75%
Compare
Sad Songs Remembered
Philip Bourke Marston
Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster
75% life, beauty
Compare
To a Tune
Philip Bourke Marston
Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster
74% life
Compare
To a Day
Philip Bourke Marston
Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster
74%
Compare
Fated!
Philip Bourke Marston
Beautiful Dreamer
Stephen Collins Foster
73% life
Compare
A Year Ago
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

Stephen Collins Foster

1834 Early Musical Influences on Foster
1844 Education at Jefferson College
1846 First Published Song
1850 Marriage to Jane D. McDowell
1850 Publication of 'Camptown Races'
1851 Publication of 'Swanee River'
1853 Relocation to New York City
1855 Friendship with George F. Root

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

Stephen Collins Foster: Tenderness, Longing, Wonder. Philip Bourke Marston: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness.

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