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Ella Wheeler Wilcox - The Beautiful Blue Danube
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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.
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