In opus 66 is one of the daintiest and most humorous of the songs, a duet to folk-words, which might be sung as a solo--‘Have a Care.’ ‘I Call from the Bank,’ in opus 69, is Brahms once more in the generous world of romance. ‘The Maiden’s Curse,’ in the same group, is a fine tragic song set to a Servian folk-poem. It is an interesting question here whether Brahms did not fail entirely to catch the spirit of the words. The maiden, in a dialogue with her mother, curses her lover, who has prevented her from finishing the washing. She hopes he may be hanged (upon her white breast), chained (in her white arms), drowned (in her love), and so on. The point of the song is the double meaning of the curses. Brahms has treated the words as the passionate rhetoric of love. But it is probable that the poem, in its true spirit, is a comic song. The second part of each curse should probably be delivered _sotto voce_, so that the mother shall not hear. In such a reading there would be a delightful comic contrast between the coarse hussy which the girl pretends to be and the sentimental love-sick maiden that she is. Brahms makes no sort of distinction between the two parts of the curses and the song in his hands attains a certain tragic intensity by virtue of the girl’s defiance of her mother. In opus 71 are ‘To the Moon’ and the _Minnelied_, one of the most admired of Brahms’ songs. In sheer beauty, however, this is inferior to the lovely lyric in opus 72, _O, kühler Wald_. Opus 84 contains Brahms’ most spirited comic song, the delightful ‘Vain Serenade,’ the high spirits of which make it an irresistible concert number. Two fine folk-songs are to be found in opus 85, a Servian ‘Maiden’s song,’ and _Ade_, from the Bohemian. Opus 94 contains the famous ‘Sapphic Ode.’[28] Here we find, in the simple melody (as apart from the song as a whole), Brahms’ intellectuality and sensuous beauty fused into a perfect whole. Over it all is that fine artistic reserve which Brahms was so master of and which makes the music so fitting an expression of Greek verse. Among others of the later songs we should mention two Heine songs, ‘Death Is the Cool Night’ and the ‘Sea Journey.’ Brahms’ songs are as permanent a part of concert programs as those of Schubert or Franz. If they are not as popular in the looser sense of the word, it is because concert audiences are not yet as a whole willing to give the necessary attention to them. For, while the Brahms songs are emphatically not dull, they do demand careful listening. Without doubt their popularity will grow steadily. And this will be the best of events both for audiences and for singers. He who has learned to listen to Brahms’ songs will never again be quite so indulgent with what is cheap and facile. And the singer who has learned how to make effective the striking qualities hidden in a Brahms song will find himself equipped with a power and dignity in his work which he could hardly get in any other way.