Donne-moi cette fleur meurtrie
Entre ta ceinture et ton cœur ;
Je la veux triste et sans couleur,
Donne-la-moi pâle et flétrie.
Ni la rose, éternelle fée,
Ni [le lis]1 qui vient de s'ouvrir,
Ne valent le dernier soupir
De la pauvre fleur étoufée.
Doux échange qui ravit l'âme,
La femme a gardé dans son cœur
Le plus doux parfum de la fleur,
La fleur, le parfum de la femme.
Available sung texts: (what is this?)
• C. Gounod View original text (without footnotes)
Note: serialized in Revue Française, Year 1, Vol. 3, 10 December, 1855, ed. by Eugène Oger and Jean Morel, found on pages 257-277 and 305-324 (the poem above is on p. 273; confirmed with Léon Gozlan, L'Amour des lèvres et l'amour du cœur, Paris, Librairie Nouvelle, 1858, page 321, titled "Romance"
Note provided by Dr Melissa Givens: The "Romance" in question is sung during a gathering of friends in the first installment of the novel. A character describes a "pastel marriage," on pp. 264-265. Mme Brunoy hands the Doctor a faded landscape. She says that just as there are paintings in oil, watercolor, pencil, and pastels, there are marriages made of the same materials. Pastel marriages "... are very lively, colorful, dazzling, passionate, so seductive, that from a distance one would think them in oil; but they have a great defect, they fade, they fade from year to year, and they finish, like this landscape that you hold, Doctor, by seeing only the paper. Unfortunately, this paper, the only testimony that remains, is the very act of marriage. My marriage is pastel, and, like this landscape, my marriage is henceforth an effaced, extinct thing, a dead thing."
1 Gounod: "ce lys"
Text Authorship:
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
[ None yet in the database ]
This text (or a part of it) is used in a work
- by Charles Gounod (1818 - 1893), "Donne-moi cette fleur", CG 375 (c1867), published 1869 [ voice and piano ]
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- ENG English (Faith J. Cormier) , "Romance", copyright © 2003, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust
[Administrator] , Dr Melissa Givens
[Guest Editor] This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 12
Word count: 70
Give me this flower
crushed between your girdle and your heart!
I want it sad and colourless,
give it to me, pale and wilted.
Neither the rose, eternal fairy,
nor the just-opened lily
is worth the poor
smothered blossom's last sigh.
Sweet exchange that steals the soul.
The woman has kept in her heart
the flower's sweetest perfume,
the flower, the woman's perfume.