Ruggles was a friend of Charles Ives, and both were New England musical rebels, although is little in common between the two in terms of musical style. Ruggles music is hard-edged, craggy, incredibly concentrated, and exceptionally serious. He took a long time over his music. This piece is a case in point. It was originally requested for an autumn, 1926 concert of the International Composers' Guild in 1926. It was finally finished in 1931, and was premiered in 1932 in Paris, Nicholas Slonimsky conducting. Its American premiere was not until 1966, the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jean Martinon in a special concert at Bowdoin College in Maine for the Ruggles' ninetieth birthday.

The long gestation period was common for Ruggles; he ended up producing only a tiny catalogue, of which this fifteen minute piece is one of the longest. Its title comes from a line in Robert Browning's poem Pauline: "Sun-treader, Light and Life be thine forever."

The piece opens up with a magnificent gesture, powerful timpani strokes with bright, blazing, striding brasses, that seems to be a translation into musical terms of the title. There are amazing contrasts in the work: Long, rich lyrical passages (usually very chromatic lines bespeaking some yearning for the infinite) alternate with sections of powerful acceleration and accumulation of power. Strong, shouting rhetoric alternates with passages of great serenity. The work is exhausting in its concentration and in its unyielding qualities, but it is also work literally unlike any other, and an important item in American musical history.

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