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 measure
    Like 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 presses
    Is sylph like in its grace.
        As a leaf on the bounding river
    Is lost in the seething sea,
        I know that forever and ever
    My dream is lost to me.

        And still the viols are playing
    That grand old wordless rhyme;
        And still those two ate swaying
    In perfect tune and time.
        If the great bassoons that mutter,
    If the clarinets that blow,
        Were given a voice to utter
    The secret things they know,

        Would the lists of the slam who slumber
    On the Danube's battle-plains
        The unknown hosts outnumber
    Who 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 passion
    Is 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 keeping
    The lists of these who fall.