LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,106)
  • Text Authors (19,480)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Translation by François-Victor Hugo (1828 - 1873)

The ousel cock, so black of hue
Language: English 
The ousel cock, so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill,
The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill.

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plain-song cuckoo grey,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay.

About the headline (FAQ)

Note: used in Matthew King's A Song of Byrds.

Text Authorship:

  • by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 3, Scene 1: Bottom's song [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):

    [ None yet in the database ]

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

  • Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767 - 1845) ; composed by Hugo Wolf.
    • Go to the text.

Other available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (François-Victor Hugo)


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2010-04-10
Line count: 8
Word count: 46

Le merle, si noir de couleur
Language: French (Français)  after the English 
Le merle, si noir de couleur,
Au bec jaune-orange,
La grive à la note si juste,
Le roitelet avec sa petite plume...

Le pinson, le moineau, et l'alouette,
Le gris coucou avec son plain-chant,
Dont maint homme écoute la note
Sans oser lui répondre non !

About the headline (FAQ)

Text Authorship:

  • by François-Victor Hugo (1828 - 1873) [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Based on:

  • a text in English by William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), no title, appears in Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 3, Scene 1: Bottom's song
    • Go to the text page.

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

    [ None yet in the database ]


Researcher for this page: Guy Laffaille [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2011-11-30
Line count: 8
Word count: 45

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris