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.