This early song by Charles Ives has conventional harmonies, a conventional-looking melody, and a sentiment that is not at all out of the ordinary for the late Victorian era.

The text is attributed in Ives' volume of 114 Songs to a poet simply identified as "Moore." It is a suggestion by a young man on a young May night to a young woman to go off to a secluded grove; "...best of all the ways to lengthen days is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear."

However, there are some things about this song that make at a bit odd. For one thing, it has to be one of the few serenades that both make textural reference to the "drowsy world," dreaming in a tempo marked at Allegretto vivace. The accompaniment to this dreamy love music is crisp staccato notes while the voice sings in smooth notes. The only time the piano actually joins the voice on the same notes is when the voice repeats the words "is dreaming," suddenly stuck on the same lulling three note pattern.

After this there is a change of texture. The tonality, which has been in a conventional E flat major (with a little chromaticism), suddenly jolts into B major as the accompaniment becomes simple chords that almost forcefully pull the song back into E flat.

Ives' 114 Songs includes songs from all periods of his career, including funeral music for a childhood pet written before he was a teenager right down to a bitter sore loser song about the 1920 presidential election. It contains songs that are conventional and radical, naïve and philosophically visionary.

Ives' decision to include a total representation of all phases of his career was probably prompted by the possibility that he would soon die of complications from diabetes. (The prompt development of insulin treatment spared him that for another 30 years.) So he included easily sung songs, rarely less than good quality, but often found some way to insulate the songs that seemed too "nice" or conventional. In the case of this song he labeled it as one of a group of eight "Sentimental Ballads."

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