Poems of Passion — 11 - The beautiful blue Danube

Starve it?

Yes, yes, that is the only way.

Give it no food, of glance, or word, or sigh;

No memories, even, of any bygone day;

No crumbs of vain regrets--so let it die.

"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 slain 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.

[Illustration: "THEY DRIFT DOWN THE HALL TOGETHER"]