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

Charles Williams Charles Williams

Poet B

William Canton William Canton
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 63% Poems 83% Blended 72%
Swap sides Another related pair
Charles Williams

Charles Williams

20 September 1886 – 15 May 1945 (~59)
3 live poems · English

On a crisp September morning in 1886, in the shabby-genteel precincts of Holloway, North London, Charles Walter Stansby Williams entered a world that would never quite know what to make of him. The only son of Richard Walter Stansby Williams and Mary Wall, young Charles was born into circumstances that trembled on the edge of respectability. His father, a journalist and foreign business correspondent who wrote in Fre…

“If one is anxious to write about God, one ought to be anxious to write well.”

Neighbourhood: Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Mystical & Spiritual Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Joy
William Canton

William Canton

27 October 1845 – 2 May 1926 (~81)
3 live poems · English

In the pantheon of Victorian literature, where giants like Tennyson and Browning cast long shadows, there existed quieter voices whose contributions to the literary landscape were no less profound for being more intimate in scope. William Canton, born on a Chinese island to colonial parents and destined to become one of Britain's most beloved children's authors, represents one such voice—a writer whose life spanned c…

“Of course I have kept to the sunny, the idyllic side of the subject. Why not? I know there is another side, but this is a true side, it is the side always turned to me, and I am well pleased with it, just as most people are well pleased with the single sunny side of the moon.”

Neighbourhood: Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Victorian Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness

In time

Charles Williams
William Canton
1845 1945
They overlapped for 41 years (1886–1926). When Charles Williams was born, William Canton was about 41. Charles Williams was about 40 when William Canton died.

On the map

About 9,347 km separate Islington, London, England from Zhoushan, Zhejiang, China. 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

From the biographies

Charles Williams: st albans, oxford university, florence conway, c.s. lewis, t.s. eliot, the silver stair, war in heaven, descent into hell. William Canton: chushan, zhoushan, thomas canton, mary thomas, jamaica, glasgow, the invisible playmate, george gissing.

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.

The Assumption
Charles Williams
73% world
Compare
Bethlehem
William Canton
Her Dark Eyes Sparkle
Charles Williams
71% spiritual
Compare
The Kingfisher
William Canton
Her Dark Eyes Sparkle
Charles Williams
69% world
Compare
Nature's Magic
William Canton
Reunion
Charles Williams
69%
Compare
The Kingfisher
William Canton
Reunion
Charles Williams
67% world
Compare
Nature's Magic
William Canton
The Assumption
Charles Williams
66% world
Compare
Nature's Magic
William Canton

The world around them

While their lives overlapped

Notable events from the years they were both alive.

Emotional landscapes

Charles Williams: Tenderness, Longing, Joy. William Canton: Wonder, Spirituality, Tenderness.

Skip to main content