La brise fait onduler les [nénuphars]1
dont le parfum vient embaumer le palais
qui s’élève au milieu du lac.
Un peu ivre, Li-Si danse.
Tout à coup, chancelante,
elle s’appuie contre le lit de jade [blanc,
et elle]2 sourit.

View text without footnotes

Confirmed with Franz Toussaint, La flûte de jade : poésies chinoises, Paris: H. Piazza, 1922, page 117.

¹ Goeyvaerts: "lotus"
² Goeyvaerts: "blanc./ Elle"

Text Authorship:

• by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955), "La danseuse", appears in La flûte de jade [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Based on:

• a text in Chinese (中文) by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist  [text unavailable]
  • Go to the text page.

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by Therèse Brenet (b. 1935), "La danseuse", copyright © 2008 [ baritone, flute and piano ], from Poème de Jade, no. 6, Editions de la Fabrique Musique [sung text not yet checked]
• by Karel Goeyvaerts (1923 - 1993), "La danseuse", 1949 [ voice and piano ], from La flûte de Jade, no. 8 [sung text checked 1 time]

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

• ENG English (Grant Hicks) , "The Dancing Girl", copyright © 2026, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Research team for this page: Grant Hicks [Guest Editor] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2026-02-07
Line count: 7
Word count: 41