The Hen with Golden Eggs | Greed loses everything in its desire to gain everything

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by Jean de La Fontaine (1621 - 1695)

Translation © by Grant Hicks

La Poule aux oeufs d'or

Language: French (Français)

Our translations: ENG

L'avarice perd tout en voulant tout gagner.
Je ne veux, pour le témoigner,
Que celui dont la Poule, à ce que dit la Fable,
Pondait tous les jours un oeuf d'or.
Il crut que dans son corps elle avait un trésor.
Il la tua, l'ouvrit, et la trouva semblable
A celles dont les oeufs ne lui rapportaient rien,
S'étant lui-même ôté le plus beau de son bien.
Belle leçon pour les gens chiches :
Pendant ces derniers temps, combien en a-t-on vus
Qui du soir au matin sont pauvres devenus
Pour vouloir trop tôt être riches ?

Text Authorship:

by Jean de La Fontaine (1621 - 1695), "La Poule aux oeufs d'or" [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):

by Rudolf (Ruud) Leopold Koumans (b. 1929), "La Poule aux oeufs d'or", op. 25 no. 4 (1964) [ chorus and orchestra ], from Vijf fabels van La Fontaine, no. 4 [sung text not yet checked]
by Guy Miaille (b. 1930), "La Poule aux œufs d'or" [ medium voice and piano ], from 8 Fables de La Fontaine, no. 6, Édition Les Escholiers [sung text not yet checked]

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

Also set in English, a translation by Marianne Moore (1887 - 1972) , "The hen that laid the golden eggs", appears in The Fables of La Fontaine: A Complete New Translation, first published 1954, copyright © ; composed by Juliana Hall.
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Other available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

ENG English (Grant Hicks) , "The Hen with Golden Eggs", copyright © 2025, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2009-05-31
Line count: 12
Word count: 95

The Hen with Golden Eggs

Language: English after the French (Français)

Greed loses everything in its desire to gain everything.
As witness to this I have need only
Of him whose hen, as the fable relates,
Laid every day a golden egg.
He thought she had a treasure inside her body.
He killed her, opened her up, and found her no different
From those whose eggs yielded him nothing,
Having deprived himself of the most valuable of his goods.
A fine lesson for miserly folk:
In recent times, how many have we seen
Who have become poor overnight
Through wanting to get rich too fast?

Text Authorship:

Translation from French (Français) to English copyright © 2025 by Grant Hicks, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you may ask the copyright-holder(s) directly or ask us; we are authorized to grant permission on their behalf. Please provide the translator's name when contacting us.
Contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

a text in French (Français) by Jean de La Fontaine (1621 - 1695), "La Poule aux oeufs d'or"
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This text was added to the website: 2025-11-01
Line count: 12
Word count: 94