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.