A calm song tells of the first streaks of light; woodwind and harp add their voices; a mellifluous hymn chants the stirring flowers, and leads into a rhythmically, more incisive, but still sustained, orchestral song, which bears upon its surface the choral proclamation of the sun: "I am! I am life! I am Beauty infinite!" The flux and reflux of the instrumental surge grows in intensity, the music begins to glow with color and pulsate with eager life, and reaches a mighty sonority, gorged with the crash of a multitude of tamtams, cymbals, drums, and bells, at the climacteric reiteration of "Calore! Luce! Amor!" The piece is thrillingly effective, but as little operatic as the tintinnabulatory chant of the cherubim in the prologue of Boito's "Mefistofele." And now allegory makes room for the drama.

To the door of her cottage, embowered on the banks of a quiet stream, comes Iris.

The peak of Fujiyama glows in the sunlight.

Iris is fair and youthful and innocent.
A dream has disturbed her.

"Gorgons and Hydras and Chimaeras dire" had filled her garden and threatened her doll, which she had put to sleep under a rose-bush.