A single commission, the
four song-cycles op. 24 to op. 27 were deliberate essays
in contrasted intonations: the deep-hue'd bittersweet English
pastoral of Edward Thomas (Lights
Out, op.24); the spare
angular harshness of Cunningham's mordant epigrams (In
the Thirtieth Year, op.25); evocation of Elizabethan / Jacobean lute- and
consort-song in the contralto set (Author
of Light, op. 26); finally
an extended plunge into pantheism ecstatic or meditative, with
the intertwined Stevens and Rosetti in The
Leaves Cry, op 27.
