It is a rather common pedagogical practice for music composition teachers to assign their students poetry that has already been the subject of important songs in the Lieder literature. This was the habit of Ives' teacher at Yale University, Horatio Parker.

In this case the poem was Heinrich Heine's "Die Lotosblume" ("Die Lotosblume ängestigt"), already famous as a song by Robert Schumann, Parker's ideal as a song composer. (It is number 7 in Schumann's large song collection called Myrthen, Op. 25.)

When Ives compiled his large volume of 114 Songs he included many of these student efforts. Since he was seriously ill with diabetes, which had already caused at least one heart attack, he keenly felt the need to present a picture of his entire development as a composer in the volume by including juvenilia and student works.

In some cases Ives simply presented the music as he had written it for Parker. In other cases he substituted English words without reference to the origins of the song, sometimes reworking the music. This is a rare case where he acknowledged the genesis of such a song, for in a note he writes, "Composed originally to "Die Lotosblume" but as the setting was unsatisfactory, the other words were written for it."

In addition, he included the words to "Die Lotosblume" as an alternative to the English text. Ives dated the English version of the song to 1899, and is silent as to the origins of the English text, which is not a translation but a new poem written to fit the song.

The identity of the poet is Harmony Twichell, which makes the date of 1899 clearly wrong. Ives went off the top of his head in remembering dates the songs were written, and made several mistakes of this nature. He may also have been misled by his habit of writing new music on any vacant area that might have existed on the first piece of music score paper that he could grab, seeing an 1899 date on some other piece of music on it and thinking he wrote them both at the same approximate time.

But Harmony did not start writing lyrics for Ives' songs until 1906. The lyrics are love poetry, and Ives feels free to include advanced harmonies in the piano part. As writing partners, Charles and Harmony attained that degree of comfort only (she to write poetry that is unambiguously about love, and he to write in visionary, strange chord formations) in the months before their wedding in June 1908.

The song is very pretty. The singer's line is grateful and flowing, and without undue difficulty or strange modulations. It is the piano that sometimes moves into distant musical regions, but it soon returns home. While not characteristic of other music Ives was then writing, the music supports the changing imagery of the poem quite well and is an affecting recital piece.

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