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

Philip Bourke Marston Philip Bourke Marston

Poet B

Ernest Dowson Ernest Dowson
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 75% Poems 92% Blended 83%
Swap sides Another related pair
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 could see the tree-boughs waving in the wind, and I could see the pageant of sunset in the west, and the glimmer of a fire upon the hearth.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Love Poets, Pre-Raphaelite Poets, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
Ernest Dowson

Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900 (~33)
18 live poems · English

In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to 1900—produced poetry of such delicate melancholy and exquisite craftsmanship that it continues to ca…

“Let us seek Knowledge. At least let us shun emotion as we would hell, for which it is a synonym. Let us live in ourselves and for ourselves.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Decadent Poets, Symbolist Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair

In time

Philip Bourke Marston
Ernest Dowson
1850 1900
They overlapped for 21 years (1867–1887). When Ernest Dowson was born, Philip Bourke Marston was about 17. Ernest Dowson was about 20 when Philip Bourke Marston died.

On the map

About 87 km separate London, England from Canterbury, Kent, England. Shared ground: United Kingdom.

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

Philip Bourke Marston only

Ernest Dowson only

From the biographies

london loss

Philip Bourke Marston: london, john westland marston, algernon charles swinburne, song-tide and other poems, all in all, blindness, victorian poetry, pre-raphaelite. Ernest Dowson: lee, kent, rhymers' club, william butler yeats, adelaide foltinowicz, verses, non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno cynarae, vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam, decadent movement.

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.

A Year Ago
Philip Bourke Marston
86% beloved, love, life
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
Sad Songs Remembered
Philip Bourke Marston
86% love, self, beloved
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
Bereft
Philip Bourke Marston
85%
Compare
To a Lost Love
Ernest Dowson
Changeless
Philip Bourke Marston
84% love, life
Compare
In Tempore Senectutis
Ernest Dowson
A little time for laughter
Philip Bourke Marston
84% love, death, laughter, life
Compare
Vitae Summa Brevis
Ernest Dowson
The One Gift
Philip Bourke Marston
84% love, beloved
Compare
Exchanges
Ernest Dowson

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Philip Bourke Marston: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. Ernest Dowson: Longing, Sorrow, Despair.

Compare their emotional landscapes
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