The Naked Girl | To go to meet her betrothed

Attention! Some of this material is not in the public domain.

It is illegal to copy and distribute our copyright-protected material without permission. It is also illegal to reprint copyright texts or translations without the name of the author or translator.

To inquire about permissions and rates, contact Emily Ezust at licenses@email.lieder.example.net

If you wish to reprint translations, please make sure you include the names of the translators in your email. They are below each translation.

Note: You must use the copyright symbol © when you reprint copyright-protected material.

by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955)

Translation © by Grant Hicks

La jeune fille nue

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

Our translations: ENG GER

Pour aller retrouver son fiancé, 
sous le grand saule qui est au bord du fleuve,
elle avait mis ses deux plus belles robes.

Lorsque le soleil commença de décliner,
ils causaient encore, tendrement.
Tout à coup, [elle]¹ se leva, honteuse,
parce qu'elle n'avait plus sa troisième robe :
l'ombre du saule.

Available sung texts: (what is this?)

• H. Badings

View text without footnotes

Confirmed with Franz Toussaint, La flûte de jade : poésies chinoises, Paris: H. Piazza, 1920, page 86.

¹ Badings: "la jeune fille"

Text Authorship:

by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955), "La jeune fille nue", 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 Li-Chuang-Kia (1703 - 1758) [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 Henk Badings (1907 - 1987), "La jeune fille nue", from Chansons orientales, no. 2 [sung text checked 1 time]

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

ENG English (Grant Hicks) , "The Naked Girl", copyright © 2026, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Das nackte Mädchen", copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

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

This text was added to the website: 2003-11-06
Line count: 8
Word count: 51

The Naked Girl

Language: English after the French (Français)

To go to meet her betrothed, 
beneath the large willow at the river's edge, 
she had worn her two finest robes. 

When the sun began to set, 
they were still conversing tenderly.
Suddenly, [she]¹ stood up, ashamed 
because she no longer had her third robe:
the shade of the willow.

View text without footnotes
¹ Badings: "the girl"

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), "La jeune fille nue", 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 Li-Chuang-Kia (1703 - 1758) [text unavailable]
- Go to the text page.

This text was added to the website: 2026-04-07
Line count: 8
Word count: 51