So also is it with the construction of the pieces. We find everywhere traces of the later sonata-style; and not less in the dance-forms than in free movements. It was too natural to repeat the beginning of the piece at the end, then to transpose a second theme into the main key, and in the centre to work out the main motive in a kind of free fantasia. But so long as the author held fast to the binary form of the piece, and to the Da capo of each half, as was the case at this time, so long did the parts of the “developments” and repetitions fail to concentrate themselves so completely as not to leave a rich field of varied forms in which fancy could move at ease. Bach’s imagination was keen enough to give to every one of these forms, as they developed themselves each moment, a natural and elemental strength. A toccata by him, although they are all very various in form, or a fantasia, like the C minor, which is of sonata-character, is built up so firmly and self-evidently that the later uniformity of the sonata seems rather to betray a weakening than a strengthening of style. [That the severe forms of Prelude and Fugue are abundantly capable of expressing poetical ideas is easily shown. Turn only to the D minor Prelude and Fugue in the second part of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. Although the casual reader perceives in the one movement merely an exercise in two parts, in the other, one in three parts, it requires only a slight exercise of imagination to see that the work really pictures some such feelings as the following: In the Prelude, a man suddenly realises himself in the true “out-of-doors” of this life, with the rain and hail of difficulties and troubles sensibly battering him. Bravely, but ineffectually, he tries to push through the tempest, and sinks wearily into half-sleep, is awakened by a renewed riot of the elements around, tries harder than before, and longer too, to impress himself on his circumstances, and be master of things, and succeeds in a sorrowful kind of way, for the storm passes, sighs itself out, and he at last can rest. In the Fugue, he tries to begin his work in the world. His efforts are strong in their intention, but die down as weakly as the devil himself could wish, one after another. But though these messengers of his will return to him empty again and again, he still goes on. “It is the best I can do, and something may come of it in the end,” he seems to say. And there is in the final bars, where the subject occurs for the last time, a certain expression of savage pleasure at the thought of not having given in, mingled with the abiding knowledge of an abundant measure of continual failure, such as is no imagination to any man who cares about his work, and has arrived at the sorrowful conviction that most of his walking must be done in the dark.][82]