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

James Weldon Johnson James Weldon Johnson

Poet B

Charles Bertram Johnson Charles Bertram Johnson
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 83% Poems 89% Blended 86%
Swap sides Another related pair
James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson

17 June 1871 – 26 June 1938 (~67)
2 live poems · English

James Weldon Johnson entered the world on June 17, 1871, in Jacksonville, Florida, a bustling port city where the St. Johns River met the Atlantic and where the scars of Reconstruction still lingered in the humid air. He left it on June 26, 1938, in a car accident near Wiscasset, Maine, at the age of sixty-seven, his body laid to rest in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Between those dates stretched a life of astonish…

“The Negro in the United States is not a racial problem. He is a human problem.”

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Harlem Renaissance, Political Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities
Charles Bertram Johnson

Charles Bertram Johnson

5 October 1880 – 20 March 1958 (~78)
3 live poems · English

Charles Bertram Johnson entered the world on October 5, 1880, in the small town of Callao, Missouri, a place where the rolling prairies of Macon County stretched under vast Midwestern skies, whispering promises and hardships in equal measure. He departed this life on March 20, 1958, at the age of seventy-seven, in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he was laid to rest in Longview Cemetery. His seventy-seven years spanne…

Neighbourhood: African American Poets, American Poets, Devotional Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Nature Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Spirituality, Peace, Longing
Listen Timeline Affinities

In time

James Weldon Johnson
Charles Bertram Johnson
1871 1958
They overlapped for 59 years (1880–1938). When Charles Bertram Johnson was born, James Weldon Johnson was about 9. Charles Bertram Johnson was about 58 when James Weldon Johnson died.
James Weldon Johnson in history Charles Bertram Johnson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 1,446 km separate Jacksonville, Florida, USA from Callao, Missouri, USA. Shared ground: United States.

James Weldon Johnson

Charles Bertram Johnson

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 self african

James Weldon Johnson only

girl youth heart desire fifteen shame existence philosophical racial

Charles Bertram Johnson only

serenity faith soul love debt obligation greed spring world bird winter water

From the biographies

harlem renaissance

James Weldon Johnson: jacksonville, florida, harlem renaissance, lift ev'ry voice and sing, grace nail, the autobiography of an ex-colored man, fifty years and other poems, the book of american negro poetry, god's trombones. Charles Bertram Johnson: callao, missouri, jefferson city, longview cemetery, paul laurence dunbar, songs of my people, the mantle of dunbar, lincoln school, moberly, missouri.

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.

Life
James Weldon Johnson
86% life, african
Compare
Serenity
Charles Bertram Johnson
Girl of Fifteen
James Weldon Johnson
77%
Compare
Spring
Charles Bertram Johnson
Girl of Fifteen
James Weldon Johnson
73% self
Compare
So Much
Charles Bertram Johnson
Life
James Weldon Johnson
73%
Compare
Spring
Charles Bertram Johnson
Girl of Fifteen
James Weldon Johnson
73% life
Compare
Serenity
Charles Bertram Johnson
Life
James Weldon Johnson
72%
Compare
So Much
Charles Bertram Johnson

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

James Weldon Johnson

1899 Marriage to Grace Nail
1900 Founding of the Negro National Anthem
1906 Appointment as U.S. Consul in Nicaragua
1909 Founding Member of the NAACP
1912 First Published Work: 'The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man'
1914 Becoming the First African American to Head a Major U.S. Government Agency
1927 Publication of 'God's Trombones'

Charles Bertram Johnson

1886 Early Education in Callao
1910 Ordination as a Minister
1922 Publication of 'Songs of the Heart'
1930 Relocation to Jefferson City
1935 Publication of 'Voices of the Heart'
1945 Recognition by the NAACP
1955 Final Publication: 'Reflections of a Heart'
1957 Death of Mary Johnson

Emotional landscapes

James Weldon Johnson: Sorrow, Wonder, Longing. Charles Bertram Johnson: Spirituality, Peace, Longing.

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