Sept haï-kaïs "La petite tortue ...", is only seventeen measures long—the number of syllables in a Japanese haiku. Alexis Roland-Manuel remarked on this "mélodie": "Do not let your modesty make you forget a certain fable by La Fontaine. You hurry slowly, perhaps, but none of your steps are wasted. How many hares envy you!" The harmony is pricked with fine, expressive dissonances. For the third "mélodie", "Le coq ...", the instruments "peck" the melody with appoggiaturas in a spirit similar to that in Ravel's "Histoires naturelles" (1906). According to Andrieu, "Maurice Delage's composition is simple and refined; the composer stays ever attentive
Strugnell's Haiku the poet's life. The first of Strugnell's "Three Haiku" is a eulogy to cherry blossom, which the poet thinks "looks really nice". In the second haiku, the poet laments his imminent baldness, comparing it to the seasonal fallen leaves and snow. In the last haiku, describing a November evening, the poet notes that "the pubs are open". Matthews's settings of the first two haiku are essentially pentatonic in melody and harmony. The first haiku is marked by Matthews as "with fervour, but soon becoming gentle and introspective"; the second as "delicate: like porcelain." In the second haiku the time signature