What shall we do with this fond love, dear heart?
It grows a heavier burden day by day.

Hide it? In all earth's caverns, void and vast,
There is not room enough to hide it, dear;
Not even the mighty storehouse of the past
Could cover it from our own eyes, I fear.

Drown it? Why, were the contents of each ocean
Merged into one great sea, too shallow then
Would be its waters to sink this emotion
So deep it could not rise to life again.

Burn it? In all the furnace flames below,
It would not in a thousand years expire.
Nay! it would thrive, exult, expand, and grow,
For from its very birth it fed on fire.

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