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.