"unloosed hurricanes,"

speaking, imperiously,

"with husky-haughty lips";

while elsewhere, as in the "Wandering Iceberg" and "Nautilus" studies,
the pervading tone is of Swinburne's

"deep divine dark dayshine of the sea."

"Starlight" is of a brooding and solemn tenderness. The "Song" and
"A.D. MDCXX." (a memoir of the notorious galleon of the Pilgrims) are
in a lighter vein. The tonal plangency, the epic quality, of these
studies is extraordinary,--exposing a tendency toward an orchestral
fulness and breadth of style that will offer a more pertinent theme
for comment in a consideration of the sonatas. Their littleness is
wholly a quantitative matter; their spiritual and imaginative
substance is not only of rare quality, but of striking amplitude.

We come now to the final volumes in the series of what one may as well
call pianistic "nature-studies": the "Fireside Tales" (op. 61) and
"New England Idyls" (op. 62), which, together with the songs of op.
60, constitute the last of his published works (they were all issued
in 1902). In these last piano pieces there is a new quality, an
unaccustomed accent. One notes it on the first page of the opening
number of the "Fireside Tales," "An Old Love Story," where the voice
of the composer seems to have taken on an unfamiliar _timbre_. There
is here a turn of phrase, a quality of sentiment, which are notably
fresh and strange. There is in this, and in "By Smouldering Embers," a