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

Philip Bourke Marston Philip Bourke Marston

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 67% Poems 87% Blended 76%
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…

“It seems to me this perfect poem is possessed by the melancholy yet tender music of winds sighing at twilight, in some churchyard, through old trees that watch beside silent graves.”

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

Philip Bourke Marston
Charles Bertram Johnson
1850 1958
They overlapped for 8 years (1880–1887). When Charles Bertram Johnson was born, Philip Bourke Marston was about 30. Charles Bertram Johnson was about 7 when Philip Bourke Marston died.
Philip Bourke Marston in history Charles Bertram Johnson in history Years they were given

On the map

About 6,820 km separate London, England from Callao, Missouri, USA. Different countries, different weather — unless a poem carries one landscape into the other.

Philip Bourke Marston

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

love life world spring

Philip Bourke Marston only

beloved grief death memory loss beauty suffering pain lover sorrow queen woman

Charles Bertram Johnson only

serenity faith soul african debt self obligation greed bird winter water marsh

From the biographies

Philip Bourke Marston: london, john westland marston, algernon charles swinburne, song-tide and other poems, all in all, blindness, victorian poetry, pre-raphaelite. 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.

A Mood
Philip Bourke Marston
82% spring
Compare
Spring
Charles Bertram Johnson
The One Gift
Philip Bourke Marston
80% love
Compare
So Much
Charles Bertram Johnson
My Love is Dead
Philip Bourke Marston
79% world, winter, nature, spring
Compare
Spring
Charles Bertram Johnson
Sad Songs Remembered
Philip Bourke Marston
77%
Compare
Spring
Charles Bertram Johnson
To a Day
Philip Bourke Marston
76%
Compare
Spring
Charles Bertram Johnson
Moveless Memories
Philip Bourke Marston
76% world
Compare
Spring
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

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

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

Philip Bourke Marston: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness. Charles Bertram Johnson: Spirituality, Peace, Longing.

Skip to main content