Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Beautiful Blue Danube

[With "Blue Danube Waltz" as musical accompaniment.]

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 for ever and ever
  My dream is lost to me.

And still the viols are playing
   That grand old wordless rhyme;
And still those two are 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 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 those who fall. 

1. The Birth of the Orchid
2. The Call (All wantonly in hours of joy)
3. Be Not Attached
4. Behold the Earth
5. The Black Charger

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