The music of this movement is mostly soft and legato, meditating on the image of some 'young girls picking lotus flowers at the riverbank'. Later in the movement there is a louder, more articulated section in the brass as the young men ride by on their horses.

There is a long orchestral postlude to the sung passage, as the most beautiful of the young maidens looks longingly after the most handsome of the young men.

---

A listening guide of Das Lied von der Erde – Von der Schönheit with Lew Smoley.