A Spring Day | Since life is as deceitful as a dream

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by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955)

Translation © by Grant Hicks

Un Jour de Printemps

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

Our translations: ENG

Puisque la vie est décevante comme un rêve,
pourquoi se tourmenter ?
Je préfère m'enivrer jusqu'à tomber.

C'est ce que j'ai encore fait, hier.
A mon réveil, j'ai regardé autour de moi.
Un oiseau gazouillait parmi les fleurs.
Je l'ai prié de me renseigner sur la saison,
et il m'a répondu que nous étions à l'époque
où le printemps fait chanter les oiseaux.

Comme j'étais près de m'attendrir, 
je me suis encore versé à boire,
j'ai chanté jusqu'au lever de la lune,
et j'ai, de nouveau, perdu la notion des choses.

Confirmed with Franz Toussaint, La flûte de jade : poésies chinoises, Paris: H. Piazza, 1920, pages 103-104.

Text Authorship:

by Franz Toussaint (1879 - 1955), "Un jour de printemps", subtitle: "Le poète écrit quelques vers à la louange de l'ivresse", 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), "春日醉起言志"
- 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 Marie Marjori Hajary (1921 - 2017), "Un Jour de Printemps", 1950 [ voice, 2 flutes, viola and violoncello ], from Flûte de jade, no. 3 [sung text not yet checked]

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

ENG English (Grant Hicks) , "A Spring Day", copyright © 2026, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

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

This text was added to the website: 2026-04-25
Line count: 13
Word count: 90

A Spring Day

Language: English after the French (Français)

Since life is as deceitful as a dream,
why torture yourself?
I'd rather get falling-down drunk.

That 's what I did again, yesterday.
When I came to, I looked all around me 
A bird was chattering among the flowers.
I begged him to tell me the season,
and he answered that it was the time 
when Spring makes the birds sing.

As I was moved nearly to tears,
I poured myself another drink,
I sang until the moon rose,
and I once more lost track of things.

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), "Un jour de printemps", subtitle: "Le poète écrit quelques vers à la louange de l'ivresse", 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), "春日醉起言志"
- Go to the text page.

This text was added to the website: 2026-04-25
Line count: 13
Word count: 87