The Red Rose | The wife of a warrior sits by her window

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by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955)

Translation © by Grant Hicks

La rose rouge

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

Our translations: ENG

L'épouse d'un guerrier est assise près de sa fenêtre.
Le cœur lourd, elle brode une rose blanche sur un coussin de soie.
Elle s'est piqué le doigt !
Son sang coule sur la rose blanche, qui devient une rose rouge.
Sa pensée va retrouver son bien-aimé qui est à la guerre
et dont le sang rougit peut-être la neige.
Elle entend le galop d'un cheval...
Son bien-aimé arrive-t-il, enfin ?
Ce n'est que son cœur qui bat à grands coups dans sa poitrine...
Elle se penche davantage sur le coussin,
et elle brode d'argent ses larmes qui entourent la rose rouge.

Confirmed with Franz Toussaint, La flûte de jade : poésies chinoises, Paris: H. Piazza, 1920, pages 8-9.

Text Authorship:

by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955), "La rose rouge", 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 Li-Tai-Po (701 - 762) [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 Armande de Polignac (1876 - 1962), "La rose rouge", published 1922 [ medium voice and piano ], from La flûte de jade, no. 7, Genève, Éd. A. Henn, also set in English [sung text checked 1 time]

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

Also set in English, a translation by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist ; composed by Armande de Polignac.
- Go to the text.
Also set in English, a translation by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist ; composed by Arthur Farwell.
- Go to the text. [Note: the text is not in the database yet.]
Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by Hans Bethge (1876 - 1946) , "Die rothe Rose", appears in Die chinesische Flöte ; composed by Hermann Albus, José Berr, Clemens von Franckenstein, Maria Herz, Leonard Pieter Joseph Michielsen, James Martin Simon, Georg Wolfsohn.
- Go to the text.
Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by Alfred Henschke (1890 - 1928) , "Die weisse und die rote Rose ", first published 1915 ; composed by Hanns Eisler, Walther Hirschberg, Béla Reinitz, Alice Samter.
- Go to the text.
Also set in Russian (Русский), a translation by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist ; composed by Julia Weissberg.
- Go to the text. [Note: the text is not in the database yet.]

Research team for this page: Grant Hicks [Guest Editor] , Sharon Krebs [Senior Associate Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2008-02-19
Line count: 11
Word count: 99

The Red Rose

Language: English after the French (Français)

The wife of a warrior sits by her window. 
With a heavy heart, she embroiders a white rose on a silk cushion. 
She has pricked her finger! 
Her blood flows over the white rose, and it becomes a red rose. 
Her thoughts turn towards her beloved, who has gone to war
and whose blood may be staining the snow red. 
She hears a horse galloping... 
Is her beloved returning at last? 
It is only her heart pounding in her chest...
She bends down closer to the cushion, 
and embroiders her tears in silver around the red rose.

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 rose rouge", appears in La flûte de jade
- Go to the text page.

Based on:

a text in Chinese (中文) by Li-Tai-Po (701 - 762) [text unavailable]
- Go to the text page.

This text was added to the website: 2026-05-01
Line count: 11
Word count: 97