The Two Royal Children | There were two royal children

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by Émile Verhaeren (1855 - 1916)

Translation © by Grant Hicks

Les deux enfants de Roi

Language: French (Français)

Our translations: ENG

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Il était deux enfants de roi
Que séparaient des eaux profondes,
Et rien là-bas, qu’un pont de bois,
Là-bas, très loin, au bout du monde.

Ils s’aimèrent, — sait-on pourquoi ?
Parce que l’eau coulait profonde,
Et qu’il était, le pont de bois,
Si loin, là-bas, au bout du monde.

Confirmed with Les Blés Mouvants par Émile Verhaeren, Paris, Georges Crès et Cie, 1912, page 130.

Text Authorship:

by Émile Verhaeren (1855 - 1916), "Les deux enfants de Roi", written 1912?, appears in Les blés mouvants, poèmes, in 2. Quelques chansons de village, no. 2, first published 1912 [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 Pierre (Onfroy) de Bréville (1861 - 1949), "Les deux enfants de Roi", 1932, published 1934 [ high voice and piano ], from Quatre Mélodies, no. 1, Éd. “Au Ménestrel” Heugel [sung text not yet checked]

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

ENG English (Grant Hicks) , "The Two Royal Children", copyright © 2026, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website: 2014-09-28
Line count: 8
Word count: 49

The Two Royal Children

Language: English after the French (Français)

Choose for Diff

There were two royal children 
Separated by deep waters, 
And nothing there but a wooden bridge, 
There, far away, at the end of the world. 

They loved each other — do you know why? 
Because the water ran deep
And because the wooden bridge was
So far away, there, at the end of the world.

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 Émile Verhaeren (1855 - 1916), "Les deux enfants de Roi", written 1912?, appears in Les blés mouvants, poèmes, in 2. Quelques chansons de village, no. 2, first published 1912
- Go to the text page.

This text was added to the website: 2026-08-22
Line count: 8
Word count: 55