A pastoral theme appears at rehearsal 106 in the woodwinds, oscillating between a string motive related to the C minor theme and the opening material. Throughout this section, the timpani subtly foreshadows the coming strife with a repeated eighth note pattern played softly in the background. This action begins to intensify at rehearsal 118, with the return of the "ghost" motive from the first movement and the hammering of eighth notes in timpani, brass, high winds, and tambourine. It is a striking moment, a violent outburst in the midst of relative serenity; Elgar stated that it represented "the madness that attends the excess or abuse of passion", and tied it to a section of a Tennyson poem related to a corpse's experience in his grave ("...the hoofs of the horses beat, beat into my scalp and brain..."). The episode passes seemingly unnoticed, fading away before the recapitulation of earlier material, concluding with a triumphant C major cadence.