song, is a touch of plaint that, hushing, heralds the coming gentle figure.  We are sunk in a sweet romance, still of ancientest lore, with a sense of lost bliss in the wistful cadence.  Or do these entrancing strains lead merely to the broader melody that moves with queenly tread (of descending violins) above a soft murmuring of lower figures?  It is taken up

[Music:  (Violins) (Harp and wood doubled above)]

in a lower voice and rises to a height of inner throb rather than of outer stress.  The song departs as it came, through the tearful plaint of double phrase.  Bolder accents merge suddenly into the former impassioned song.  Here is the real sting of warrior call, with shaking brass and rolling drum, in lengthened swing against other faster sounds,—­a revel of heroics, that at the end breaks afresh into the regular song.

Yet it is all more than mere battle-music.  For here is a new passionate vehemence, with loudest force of vibrant brass, of those dulcet strains that preceded the queenly melody.  An epic it is, at the least, of ancient flavor, and the sweeter romance here rises to a tempest more overpowering than martial tumult.

It is in the harking back to primal lore that we seem to feel true passion at its best and purest, as somehow all truth of legend, proverb and fable has come from those misty ages of the earth.  The drooping harmonies merge in the returning swing of the first solemn hymn,—­a mere line that is broken by a new tender appeal, that, rising to a moving height,

[Music:  (Strings) teneramente]

yields to the former plaint (of throbbing thirds).

A longer elegy sings, with a fine poignancy, bold and new in the very delicacy of texture, in the sharp impinging of these gentlest sounds.  In the depths of the dirge suddenly, though quietly, sounds the herald melody high in the wood, with ever firmer cheer, soon in golden horns, at last in impassioned strings, followed by the wistful motive.

A phase here begins as of dull foreboding, with a new figure stalking in the depths and, above, a brief sigh in the wind.  In the growing stress these figures sing from opposite quarters, the sobbing phrase below, when suddenly the queenly melody stills the tumult.  It is answered by a dim, slow line of the ominous motive.  Quicker echoes of the earlier despond still flit here and there, with gleams of joyous light.  The plaintive (dual) song returns and too the tender appeal, which with its sweetness at last wakens the buoyant spirit of the virile theme.

And so pass again the earlier phases of resolution with the masterful conclusion; the tearful accents; the brief verse of romance, and the sweep of queenly figure, rising again to almost exultation.  But here, instead of tears and recoil, is the brief sigh over sombre harmonies, rising insistent in growing volume that somehow conquers its own mood.  A return of the virile motive is followed at the height by the throbbing dual song with vehement stress of grief, falling to lowest echoes.