Ex. 7-7: Dans les ruines d'une abbaye

One of Fauré's earliest songs, published as Op. 2 in 1866. The poem is by Victor Hugo, from his 1865 collection Les Chansons des rues et des bois (Songs of the Streets and the Woods) — one of his few volumes of short lyric poetry, in contrast to the long epic poems that fill most of his twenty-odd collections.

A newlywed couple plays and laughs in the ruins of an old abbey. They pick jasmine from the stones where nuns once prayed, play hide-and-seek in the old cloister, and kiss under the pillars and arches. The final twist: "This is the story of birds in the trees."

Fauré modified Hugo's text to create a strophic song structure, cutting one stanza and adding a repeat of the refrain. Fauré set Hugo's poetry only in his earliest works — the Romantic style of these poems suited his youthful musical language but not the more restrained style he developed later.