These pieces have an inescapable fragrance, tenderness, and zest.  “To a Wild Rose,” “Will o’ the Wisp,” “In Autumn,” “From Uncle Remus,” and “By a Meadow Brook” are slight in poetic substance, though executed with charm and humour; but the five other pieces—­“At an Old Trysting Place,” “From an Indian Lodge,” “To a Water-lily,” “A Deserted Farm,” and “Told at Sunset”—­are of a different calibre.  With the exception of “To a Water-lily,” whose quality is uncomplex and unconcealed, these tone-poems in little are a curious blend of what, lacking an apter name, one must call nature-poetry, and psychological suggestion; and they are remarkable for the manner in which they focus great richness of emotion into limited space.  “At an Old Trysting Place,” “From an Indian Lodge,” “A Deserted Farm,” and “Told at Sunset,” imply a consecutive dramatic purpose which is emphasised by their connection through a hint of thematic community.  The element of drama, though, is not insisted upon—­indeed, a large portion of the searching charm of these pieces lies in their tactful reticence.

In the “Sea Pieces” of op. 55 a larger impulse is at work.  The set comprises eight short pieces, few of them over two pages in length; yet they are modelled upon ample lines, and they have, in a conspicuous degree, that property to which I have alluded—­the property of suggesting within a limited framework an emotional or dramatic content of large and far-reaching significance.  I spoke in an earlier chapter, in this connection, of the first of these pieces, “To the Sea.”  I must repeat that this tone-poem seems to me one of the most entirely admirable things in the literature of the piano; and it is typical, in the main, of the volume.  MacDowell is one of the comparatively few composers who have been thrall to the spell of the sea; none, I think, has felt that spell more irresistibly or has communicated it with more conquering an eloquence.  This music is full of the glamour, the awe, the mystery, of the sea; of its sinister and terrible beauty, but also of its tonic charm, its secret allurement.  Here is sea poetry to match with that of Whitman and Swinburne.  The music is drenched in salt-spray, wind-swept, exhilarating.  There are pages in it through which rings the thunderous laughter of the sea in its mood of cosmic and terrifying elation, and there are pages through which drift sun-painted mists—­mists that both conceal and disclose enchanted vistas and apparitions.  There is an exhilaration even in his titles (which he has supplemented with mottos):  as “To the Sea,” “From a Wandering Iceberg,” “Starlight,” “From the Depths,” “In Mid-Ocean.”  I make no concealment of my unqualified admiration for these pieces:  with the sonatas, the “Dirge” from the “Indian” suite, and certain of the “Woodland Sketches,” they record, I think, his high-water mark.  He has carried them through with superb gusto, with unwearying imaginative fervour.  In “To the Sea,” “From the Depths,” and “In Mid-Ocean,” it is the sea of Whitman’s magnificent apostrophe that he celebrates—­the sea of