Here the story of the waves begins, and there are clearly two roles.

To light lapping and cradling of waters the wood sings the simple lay, while strings discourse in quicker, higher phrase.  The parts are reversed.  A shower of chilling wave (in gliding harps) breaks the thread.

[Music:  Con anima (Highest and lowest figure in strings.  Middle voices in octaves of wood)]

Now golden tones (of horns) sound a mystic tale of one of the former figures.  The scene shimmers

[Music:  (With rhythmic harps and strings)
(Flutes)
(Eng. horn) espressivo
(Strings)
(Horns)]

in sparkling, glinting waters (with harp and trilling wood and strings).  But against the soothing background the story (of English horn) has a chill, ominous strain.

With the returning main song comes the passionate crisis, and we are back in the mere plash and play of impersonal waves.

On dancing ripples, a nixie is laughing to echoing horns and lures us back to the story.

[Music:  (Strings with lower 8ve.) (Cl.) grazioso (Horns)]

Later, it seems, two mermaids sing in twining duet.  In a warm hue of light the horns sound a weird tale.  It is taken up by teasing chorus of lighter voices.  In the growing volume sounds a clear, almost martial call of the brass.

In a new shade of scene we recover the lost burden of song; the original figures appear (in the slower air of trembling strings and the quicker play of reed, harp and bells), and wander through ever new, moving phases.  A shower of chords (in strings and shaking brass) brings back the ominous melody, amidst a chorus of light chatter, but firmly resting on a warm background of harmony.  And the strain roves on generous path and rises out of all its gloom to a burst of profound cheer.

[Music:  (1st violins with lower 8ve.)
(2d violins; percussion with cellos below)
(Harp with violas)
(Flutes with higher 8ve.)
(See page 104, line 11.)]

As in all fairy tales, the scene quickly vanishes.  On dancing rays and ripples is the laughing nixie; but suddenly breaks the first song of the main figures.  A climactic phrase of trumpets ends with a burst of all the chorus on stirring harmony, where in diminishing strokes of bells long rings the melodic note.

The teasing motive of the nixie returns while the trumpet sounds a shadowy echo of its phrase, again to dying peal of bells.  A chorus of eerie voices sing the mocking air, and again sounds the refrain of trumpet as in rebuke.  On a tumult of teasing cries flashes a delivering burst of brilliant light, and we are back in the first scene of the story.  Only the main figure is absent.  And there is in the eager tension of pace a quivering between joy and doubt.  Then, in answer to the lighter phrase of the other, is the returning figure with a new song now of blended longing and content that soars into higher flights until a mighty chorus repeats the strain that rises to triumphant height of joy and transforms the mocking motive to the same mood.