J'avais un pot de basilic, 
      — Qui pourra me le rendre ? —
Il avait le parfum joli
      Avec la feuille tendre. 

Chaque matin et chaque jour,
      Chaque jour à toute heure
Je l'arrosais pour mon Amour, 
      Pour l'Amour que je pleure. 

Avecque de l'eau de senteur 
      Je l'arrosais sans cesse ;
Et j'y mêlais encor les pleurs
      Que versait ma tendresse. 

Si je n'avais pas, ô douleur ! 
      Dormi devant ma porte, 
J'aurais avec mon pot de fleurs
      Mon amour qu'on emporte.

About the headline (FAQ)

Confirmed with Jean Moréas, Variations sur la vie et les livres, Paris: Mercure de France, 1910, page 118.

Note: this poem owes its inspiration to a tragic story from Boccaccio's Decameron. Lisabetta falls in love with Lorenzo, a handsome young man in her brothers' employ. The brothers kill him, claiming to have sent him away on business. A dream guides the disconsolate Lisabetta to his burial place, and she digs up his head and plants it in a pot of basil, which she waters with her tears. The brothers find out and steal the pot, and Lisabetta dies of grief soon after.

Text Authorship:

• by Ioannes Papadiamantopoulos (1856 - 1910), no title [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 Adelin Marie Clovis Fermin (1867 - 1941), "Le pot de basilic" [ voice and piano ], from 15 mélodies, no. 10, Lahaye [La Haye] : Van Eck [sung text checked 1 time]

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

This text was added to the website: 2026-03-26
Line count: 16
Word count: 80