The pastoral atmosphere of Idylle de printemps is largely beholden to Grieg, the ecstasy suffusing it is Delius' own. Composed in 1889 after an 18-month course of study at the Leipzig Conservatory, the Idylle is similar in style and method to the four numbers of the Florida Suite of 1887, though where the latter bespeaks the tropical humidity of Dixie, the mood and geste of the Idylle possess a northern cast redolent of clear open spaces. It is hardly coincidental that Delius met Grieg in Leipzig in 1887, and that the two immediately hit it off. Grieg certainly recognized the vein of poetry in Delius' early works and offered what encouragement he could. The formal style of his letter of February 28, 1888, to Delius—quite different from the offhand confidences of their remaining correspondence—is a frank testimonial of the sort employed in gaining entry to publishers and performing societies. "I was pleasantly surprised, indeed stimulated, by your manuscripts and I detect in them signs of a most distinguished compositional talent in the grand style, which aspires to the highest goal." The music shown to Grieg was probably the Florida Suite. "If you will permit me, in the interests of your future, to offer you a piece of advice...it would be this, that you devote yourself now, while you are still young, fully to the pursuit of your art, rather than accept a formal position, and that you follow both your own true nature and the inner voice of your ideals and your inclinations." From a composer he loved and respected, this was heady stuff, though—taken at face value—it mainly served to confirm the course Delius had followed since his first trip to Norway in 1882 awakened in him the desire to compose. Its actual intent, however, was the persuasion of Delius' father to continue to support him in the pursuit of a compositional career, even though his triumphs at Leipzig had been more social than academic. Grieg's music was then in vogue across Europe, and Julius Delius, impressed by his endorsement, provided Fritz with an allowance that continued off and on until the elder Delius' death in 1901. Idylle de Printemps exhibits both an incipient Delian magic and how much Delius would have to unlearn of rule-of-thumb compositional technique and formal procedures, relying on repetition to free and concentrate that magic with the consummate artistry he would achieve a decade later in A Village Romeo and Juliet.

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