Songs
Lamento
(1868)
Lamento
Connaissez-vous la blanche tombe,Où flotte avec un son plaintifL'ombre d'un if?Sur l'if une pâle colombe,Triste et seule au soleil couchant,Chante son chant. On dirait que l'âme éveilléePleure sous terre à l'unissonDe la chanson,Et du malheur d'être oubliéeSe plaint dans un roucoulementBien doucement. Ah! jamais plus, près de la tombe,Je n'irai, quand descend le soirAu manteau noir,Écouter la pâle colombeChanter sur la branche de l'ifSon chant plaintif!
Lament
Do you know the white tomb, Where the shadow of a yewWaves plaintively?On that yew a pale dove,Sad and solitary at sundownSings its song;As if the awakened soulWeeps from the grave, togetherWith the song,And at the sorrow of being forgottenMurmurs its complaintMost meltingly.Ah! nevermore shall I approch that tomb,When evening descendsIn its black cloak.To listen to the pale doveOn the branch of the yew Sings its plaintive song!
Translation © Richard Stokes, from A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Eugène Marie Henri Fouques Duparc (21 January 1848 – 12 February 1933) was a French composer of the late Romantic period.
Read more here.
See Full Entry
Poet
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While Gautier was an ardent defender of Romanticism, his work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as diverse as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Proust and Oscar Wilde.
Taken from Wikipedia. To view the full article, please click here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
Lamento
Lament
If you would like to use our texts and translations, please click here for more information.
Composer
Eugène Marie Henri Fouques Duparc (21 January 1848 – 12 February 1933) was a French composer of the late Romantic period.
Read more here.
See Full Entry
Poet
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic.
While Gautier was an ardent defender of Romanticism, his work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as diverse as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Proust and Oscar Wilde.
Taken from Wikipedia. To view the full article, please click here.
See Full Entry
Sorry, no further description available.
About Oxford Lieder
Oxford Lieder is one of the world's leading promoters of song and the winner of a prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award. The focal point of each year is the two-week Oxford Lieder Festival in October.
Find out More