When Daisies Pied and Violets Blue

This MP3 Selection Expired on 04-11-2006:
The Cambridge Singers:
Spring

(A setting on Shakespeare's Love Labour's Lost, Act 5, Scene 2)

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo, then on every 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 turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo, then on every tree
Mocks married men, for thus sings he,
Cuckoo,
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.