6. _Indian Idyl_ (_Leggiero, ingenuo_). This is a lovely tone poem, opening with a characteristic little figure reminiscent of the opening of the _Love-Song_ in the _Indian Suite for Orchestra_ (_Op_. 48). The theme is punctuated by little flute-like embellishments. The middle section, _poco piu lento_, is idyllic, with a perfectly balanced, swaying rhythm. In playing this portion, the left hand should describe an equal series of semicircles as it alights first on the low chord, and then on the single note two octaves higher. The opening theme returns with the flute-like embellishments prominent, but all heard softly, as from
... _afar through the summer night Sigh the wooing flutes' soft strains_.
7. _To an Old White Pine_ (_Gravemente con dignità_). The characteristic feature of this piece is its sense of alternate mounting and declining strength. At about the middle of the movement a deeper solemnity is noticed, in a passage suggesting the _swaying, gentle forest trees_ that whisper at the feet of the huge old pines of an American forest. Some expressive and ingenious little woodland touches are included in the quiet concluding bars.
8. _From Puritan Days_. "_In Nomine Domini_" (_Con enfasi smisurata_). A stern theme opens this piece, while a passage marked _implorando_ seems to suggest the pious attitude of the immortal founders of the New England States. Soon the music becomes hurried and more impassioned, the pious, despairing motive being prominent. The opening theme is now thundered out _fortissimo_ and the piece ends with a sense of stern and rock-like strength of character.
9. _From a Log Cabin_ (_Con profondo espressione_). This piece, which should be played with great expression, stands on a level with _Mid-Winter_, No. 3 in this album. It strikes the new and sombre note already referred to and carries with it a sense of deep and vast import. The composer's unerring feeling for atmosphere is given full play. The piece as a whole is deep and problematic. The lines at its head:
_A house of dreams untold_, _It looks out over the whispering tree-tops And faces the setting sun_.
refer to MacDowell's log-cabin in which he used to compose, and they are the same that are inscribed over his grave. _From a Log Cabin_ opens quietly, with a grave theme and a clashing accompaniment that produces a different effect to that of any of the composer's earlier work, but recalls vividly the bleak second theme of _Mid-Winter_. Some powerful though small climaxes may be noticed, and then a new theme is heard softly, _con tenerezza, pensieroso_, over a florid accompaniment. After this has run its course, it is followed by intensely passionate outbursts of sorrow, the whole culminating in a thunderous repetition of the first theme. This reappears with great solemnity, which is emphasized by tolling, drum-like strokes, in the bass. The close is mysterious and impressive; the widespread chords, the wailing, clashing discords in the final bar but one, and the far away last chord, _pppp_, all tend to increase the depth and mystery of the piece. _From a Log Cabin_ is an inspired tone poem suggesting the atmosphere of a quiet evening in the woods, with the slow setting of the sun in the Golden West; a scene by which Nature often creates the sense of the mysterious more impressively and truly than any man-made attempts can equal. This view of declining day, the gradual shutting off of light and life, was strangely prophetic when MacDowell wrote it, for his own end came by a similar process in the form of an ever deepening gloom fatalling obscuring his mental light.