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

Home › Glossary › Letter S

swagman

Archaic Terms
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An itinerant labourer or tramp, especially in Australia, who travelled on foot carrying a swag or bundle of belongings.

Detailed Definition
A swagman is a historical term, chiefly associated with 19th- and early 20th-century Australia, referring to a wandering labourer who travelled from place to place seeking seasonal work while carrying his possessions in a rolled blanket known as a swag. In poetry and song, the swagman often symbolises independence, hardship, and life on the margins of society, embodying themes of exile, endurance, and freedom. Poets use the figure to evoke landscapes of distance and loneliness, as well as social realities of poverty and itinerant labour, giving voice to lives lived beyond settled domestic norms.
Example
Example in poetry:
The swagman tramped beneath the burning sky, his bedroll tight upon his back; Like a lonely swagman at dusk, he sang to the stars and asked the creek for rest; A dusty road knew only the swagman’s tread and the silence of his thoughts; They wrote of the swagman as a ghost of labour, drifting between paddocks and dawns; In bush verse, the swagman stands for freedom won through hunger, motion, and loss
Additional Notes
The term “swagman” is most strongly rooted in Australian colonial and bush literature, where it denotes an itinerant worker carrying a rolled blanket or “swag” while travelling between rural jobs. In poetry, the swagman often functions as a symbolic figure rather than merely a social type, representing transience, marginalisation, stoic endurance, or resistance to settled authority. Writers frequently use the word to evoke vast landscapes, economic hardship, and an ethic of self-reliance shaped by distance and isolation. When teaching or analysing poetry, it is useful to contrast the swagman with related figures such as the vagabond, tramp, or wanderer, noting how the Australian context gives the term a distinctive cultural resonance and emotional weight absent from its European counterparts.
Also Known As
Swaggie Sundowner Itinerant Labourer Tramp
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