"The Beautiful Blue Danube"

They drift down the hall together;He smiles in her lifted eyes;Like waves of that mighty river,The strains of the "Danube" rise.They float on its rhythmic measureLike leaves on a summer-stream;And here, in this scene of pleasure,I bury my sweet, dead dream.

Through the cloud of her dusky tresses,Like a star, shines out her face,And the form his strong arm pressesIs sylph like in its grace.As a leaf on the bounding riverIs lost in the seething sea,I know that forever and everMy dream is lost to me.

And still the viols are playingThat grand old wordless rhyme;And still those two ate swayingIn perfect tune and time.If the great bassoons that mutter,If the clarinets that blow,Were given a voice to utterThe secret things they know,

Would the lists of the slain who slumberOn the Danube's battle-plainsThe unknown hosts outnumberWho die 'neath the "Danube's" strains?Those fall where cannons rattle,'Mid the rain of shot and shell;But these, in a fiercer battle,Find death in the music's swell.

With the river's roar of passionIs blended the dying groan;But here, in the halls of fashion,Hearts break, and make no moan.And the music, swelling and sweeping,Like the river, knows it all;But none are counting or keepingThe lists of these who fall.