Classical Music | Baritone

Recorded on 08/19/2015, uploaded on 04/27/2016

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Le cygnet (The Swan)

He glides over the basin,

like a white sleigh, 

from cloud to cloud.

For he is hungry only for the fleecy clouds 

that he sees born, move,

and become lost in the water.  

There is one of them that he desires

He aims with his beak, and plunges suddenly,

his neck dressed in snow.

Then like a woman’s arm emerging from a sleeve,

he withdraws.

He has nothing. He looks:

the coy clouds have disappeared.  

He remains disenchanted only a moment, 

for the clouds slow a little before returning,

and, over there, where the water's ripples die, 

here is one forming again.

Softly, on his little pillow of feathers,

the swan paddles and approaches…

He tires himself fishing for vain reflections,

and perhaps he will die, victim of this illusion,

before catching a single piece of cloud.

But what am I saying?

Each time he plunges,

he digs with his beak the nourishing mud

and brings back a worm.

He is becoming fat like a goose.

Translated by Stephen Lancaster

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.