[Mon âme]1 a son secret, [ma vie]2 a son mystère :
Un amour éternel en un moment conçu. 
Le mal est sans [espoir]3, aussi j'ai dû le taire,
Et celle qui l'a fait n'en a jamais rien su. 

[Hélas !]4 j'aurai passé près d'elle inaperçu,
Toujours à ses côtés, et [pourtant]5 solitaire,
Et j'aurai jusqu'au bout fait mon temps sur la terre,
N'osant rien demander et n'ayant rien reçu. 

Pour elle, [quoique Dieu l'ait]6 faite douce et tendre,
Elle [ira]7 son chemin, distraite et sans entendre
[Ce murmure d'amour élevé sur ses pas ;]8

À l'austère devoir pieusement fidèle,
Elle dira, lisant ces vers tout remplis d'elle :
« Quelle est donc cette femme ? » et ne comprendra pas.

About the headline (FAQ)

View text without footnotes
¹ Lemariey: "Mon cœur"; Bizet, Thomé, Van Straten: "Ma vie"
² Bizet, Lemariey, Van Straten: "mon âme" (further changes may exist for Lemariey and Van Straten but are not shown above) ; Widor: "mon cœur"
³ Bizet: "remède"
⁴ Bizet: "Ainsi"
⁵ Bizet: "toujours"
⁶ Bizet: "que le ciel a"
⁷ Bizet: "suit"
⁸ Bizet: "La murmure d'amour élevé sur ses pas."; Widor: "Ce cœur vibrant d'amour enchaîné sur ses pas !"

Text Authorship:

• by Félix Arvers (1806 - 1850), "Sonnet imité de l'italien", written 1833, appears in Mes heures perdues, Poésies, Paris, Éd. Fournier jeune, first published 1833 [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):

• by Georges Bizet (1838 - 1875), "Ma vie a son secret", op. 21 no. 8 (1868), published 1873 [ medium voice and piano ], from Vingt mélodies pour chant et piano, no. 8, Paris, Éd. Choudens [sung text checked 1 time]
• by René de Boisdeffre (1838 - 1906), "Sonnet d'Arvers", op. 53 no. 1, published [1893] [ voice and piano ], from Six mélodies, recueil 4, no. 1, Paris, Éd. J. Hamelle [sung text not yet checked]
• by Martial Caillebotte (1853 - 1910), "Sonnet" [ medium voice and piano ], from Scènes et Mélodies, no. 4, Paris, Éd. G. Hartmann [sung text not yet checked]
• by Jacques Dusautoy (1850 - 1915), "Sonnet d'Arvers imité de l'Italien", op. 50 no. 1, published [1898] [ reciter and piano ], from Deux adaptations symphoniques, no. 1, Paris, Éd. J. Hamelle [sung text not yet checked]
• by Luciano Gallet (1893 - 1931), "Le Sonnet d'Arvers", op. 1 (1918) [sung text checked 1 time]
• by Édouard Garnier (1821 - 1887), "Mon âme a son secret", published <<1878 [ medium voice and piano ], from Vingt sonnets mis en musique, no. 19, Paris, Éditions Alphonse Leduc [sung text not yet checked]
• by André Gédalge (1856 - 1926), "Sonnet d'Arvers", 1879 [ medium voice and piano ], unpublished but available through Gallica [sung text not yet checked]
• by Jean Eugène Gaston Lemaire (1864 - 1928), "Sonnet d'Arvers", published 1914 [ medium voice and piano ], Paris, Éd. Marcel Mercier [sung text not yet checked]
• by Madeleine Lemariey (flourished c1900-1915), "Sonnet d'Arvers", <<1913 [ medium voice and piano ], Paris, Éd. Maurice Sénart & Cie. [sung text not yet checked]
• by Émile Pessard (1843 - 1917), "Sonnet d'Arvers", published 1891 [ voice and piano ], from Vingt mélodies, no. 8, Paris, Éd. Alphonse Leduc [sung text not yet checked]
• by Casimir Renard (b. 1853), "Sonnet d'Arvers ", op. 237, published 1925 [ medium voice and piano ], Paris, Éd. F. Durdilly, Ch. Hayet [sung text not yet checked]
• by Eugène Sauzay (1809 - 1901), "Sonnet d'Arvers", published [1877] [ baritone and piano ], Paris, Éd. Maison G. Flaxland, Durand, Schoenewerck et Cie.  [sung text not yet checked]
• by Eric Tanguy (b. 1968), "Mes heures perdues", 2007, published 2007 [ baritone and piano ], Éd. Salabert [sung text not yet checked]
• by François Luc Joseph Thomé (1850 - 1909), as Francis Thomé, "Sonnet d'Arvers", published [1879] [ high voice and piano ], from Dix mélodies, no. 4, Paris, Henri Heugel [sung text not yet checked]
• by Léon Van Straten , "Sonnet d'Arvers", published 1924 [ medium voice and piano ], from Deux mélodies, no. 1, Paris, Éd. Maurice Sénart [sung text not yet checked]
• by Charles Marie Jean Albert Widor (1844 - 1937), "Sonnet d'Arvers" [ voice and piano ], from Quarante mélodies, no. 32, note: published later as op. 22 no. 2 by an unknown publisher, as reprinted by Durand [sung text checked 1 time]

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

• ENG English (Emily Ezust) , "My life has its secret", copyright © 2019
• ENG English (Peter Low) , copyright © 2022, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2008-08-11
Line count: 14
Word count: 126

My life has its secret, my soul has its mystery:
An eternal love conceived in one moment:
The illness is without remedy, so I had to silence it,
And she who caused it never knew anything about it.

Thus I will have passed near her unperceived,
Ever at her side -- and ever solitary;
And up to the end of my time on the earth
I will never have dared to ask anything -- and will have received nothing.

As for her, whom Heaven has made sweet and tender,
She follows her path, preoccupied and without hearing
The murmur of love arising from her footsteps.

To her austere duty piously faithful,
She will say, reading these verses full of her:
"Who is this woman then?" -- and will not understand.