On my ebony flute, I played for you

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by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955)

Translation © by Grant Hicks

Sur ma flûte d'ébène, j'ai joué, pour...

Language: French (Français) after the Chinese (中文)

Our translations: ENG GER

Sur ma flûte d'ébène, j'ai joué, pour toi,
l'air le plus passionné que je connaissais,
mais tu regardais les pivoines, sans m'écouter.
Je t'ai donné une poésie
où j'avais célébré ta beauté,
mais tu l'as déchirée
et tu en as jeté les morceaux dans le lac,
parce qu'il n'avait pas de nénuphars, m'as-tu dit.
Je voulais te donner un merveilleux saphir,
limpide et froid comme une nuit d'hiver,
mais je l'ai gardé pour qu'il me rapelle ton cœur.

Available sung texts: (what is this?)

• H. Badings

About the headline (FAQ)

View text with all available footnotes

Confirmed with Franz Toussaint, La flûte de jade : poésies chinoises, Paris: H. Piazza, 1920, pages 97-98.

Text Authorship:

by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955), "L'indifférente", appears in La flûte de jade, Paris, Éd. H. Piazza, first published 1920 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Based on:

a text in Chinese (中文) by Wan-Tsi [text unavailable]
- Go to the text page.

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Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Grant Hicks [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2003-11-06
Line count: 11
Word count: 79

On my ebony flute, I played for you

NOTE: the footnotes have been removed from this text; return to general view

Language: English after the French (Français)

On my ebony flute, I played for you 
the most passionate tune I knew, 
but you looked at the peonies without listening to me. 
I gave you a poem
in which I'd praised your beauty, 
but you tore it up
and tossed its fragments into the lake, 
because, you said, it had no lily pads. 
I wanted to give you a marvelous sapphire, 
clear and cold as a winter's night, 
but I kept it because it reminds me of your heart.

About the headline (FAQ)

View text with all available footnotes

Translations of titles:
"Indifférente" = "Indifferent One"
"L'indifférente" = "The Indifferent One"

Text Authorship:

Translation from French (Français) to English copyright © 2026 by Grant Hicks, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you may ask the copyright-holder(s) directly or ask us; we are authorized to grant permission on their behalf. Please provide the translator's name when contacting us.
Contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

a text in French (Français) by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955), "L'indifférente", appears in La flûte de jade, Paris, Éd. H. Piazza, first published 1920
- Go to the text page.

Based on:

a text in Chinese (中文) by Wan-Tsi [text unavailable]
- Go to the text page.

Go to the general view

This text was added to the website: 2026-04-07
Line count: 11
Word count: 82