When daisies pied and violets blue [And lady-smocks all silver white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue]1, Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo, then on ev'ry tree Mocks married men, for thus sings he, Cuckoo, Cuckoo, cuckoo: o word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, [When]2 turtles tread, and rooks, and daws, And maidens bleach their summer [smocks]3, The cuckoo, then on ev'ry tree Mocks married men, for thus sings he, Cuckoo, Cuckoo, cuckoo: o word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear.
Two Elizabethan Songs
Song Cycle by Sheila Silver (b. 1946)
When Daisies Pied
Language: English
Text Authorship:
- by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), appears in Love's Labour's Lost, Act V, Scene 2 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
Set by Sheila Silver (b. 1946), 1981, first performed 1981 [ satb chorus ]View text without footnotes
1 Stravinsky: "And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,/ And lady-smocks all silver white"
2 Arne: "And"
3 Arne: "frocks"
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
Total word count: 102