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 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.

     [Illustration:  “THEY DRIFT DOWN THE HALL TOGETHER”]

     ANSWERED.

     Good-bye—­yes, I am going. 
       Sudden?  Well, you are right;
     But a startling truth came home to me
       With sudden force last night. 
     What is it?  Shall I tell you? 
       Nay, that is why I go. 
     I am running away from the battlefield
       Turning my back on the foe.

     Riddles?  You think me cruel! 
       Have you not been most kind? 
     Why, when you question me like that,
       What answer can I find? 
     You fear you failed to amuse me,
       Your husband’s friend and guest,
     Whom he bade you entertain and please—­
       Well, you have done your best. 
     Then why am I going? 
       A friend of mine abroad,
     Whose theories I have been acting upon,
       Has proven himself a fraud. 
     You have heard me quote from Plato
       A thousand times no doubt;
     Well, I have discovered he did not know
       What he was talking about.