He glides on the lake, like a white sleigh, form one cloud to another. For the only he feels is
for the fleecy could he sees appearing, moving, and vanishing in the water. It is one of these
that he wants. He takes aim with his beak and suddenly plunges his snowy neck into the
water. Then, like a woman’s arm emerging from a sleeve, he draws it back. He has caught
nothing. He looks: the startled clouds have disappeared. He is disillusioned only for a
moment for the clouds are not slow to return, and yonder, where the undulations of the
water are dying away, there is one, which is reforming.

Softly, upon a light cushion of feathers, the swan paddles and draws near. Fishing for empty
reflections exhausts him and perhaps he will die a victim of this illusion, without having
caught a single piece of cloud.

But what am I saying? Each time he plunges in, he burrows in the nourishing mud and
brings out a worm. He is growing as fat as a goose.

Texts by Jules Renard
Translations by Winifred Radford in The Interpretation of French Song by Pierre Bernac