This song, "The Wave and the Bell, " is a hair-raising work in the hands of the right accompanist and singer. The raging chords from the accompaniment and the stormy vocal lines create a work as passionate as any of the entire Romantic period. It opens with intense, almost wild chords from the piano, vividly evoking the nightmarish, drunken episode, "I dreamt that among the waves and noise of the seal, I traveled lightlessly in the night, a desolate oarsman, with no more hope of harbor...the ocean hurled its foam in my face, and the wind froze me with horror to my depths..." The voice rises in passionate declamation, and the piano's thunderous accompaniment create a vivid grandeur of expression. A silence introduces the next part of the song, more hushed, as the boat vanished, and instead he found himself clinging to an old bell in a belltower. The music again becomes furious as he describes his furious, vertiginous clinging to the bell, while the accompaniment takes on, ominously, almost a wild dance- like melody. In the last verse, as he asks, "Why did you not say, o dream, where God leads us? Why did you not say if they will have no end, the futile struggles and eternal clamor of which life is made, alas, human life!" the mood is darkly exhausted and resigned, but still eloquent and with power remaining.

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