La fille aux cheveux de lin

Remembering my dear niece, Lia Smith, the girl with flaxen hair.

"La fille aux cheveux de lin" by Claude Debussy, from Preludes Book 1, and set to the French poem by Charles-Marie-Leconte de Lisle:

Sur la luzerne en fleur assise,
Qui chante dès le frais matin?
C'est la fille aux cheveux de lin,
La rose et le lys en sa face.

Upon the clover in bloom sitting,
Who sings from the cool morning?
It is the girl with flaxen hair,
The rose and the lily in her face.

Opening on a pentatonic melody, sans rigueur, we notice a plagal cadence to M3, IV/I to G-flat major, softly establishing the home key, or with my interpretation, a modest prayer.

Later, before the this same melody returns in a higher register, we have a deceptive cadence at M79, instead of returning to I (G-flat), we move to IV (C-flat), or the the plagal chord at M2. I interpret by design, setting up the turn of the original melody from "above", a remininscence from the past.