However weak the Drachmann settings, Grieg was certainly in the midst of a new creative period, and in the next five or six years was to produce more music than for some time. Few songs date from the turn of the decade, however, and none of those that do is a significant contribution to his development as a song composer. Not surprisingly, only one of them appeared in print during Grieg's lifetime.

This was Osterlied (Easter Song), EG 146, written on 7 June 1889 to a poem by Adolf Bottger, which was published by Peters in 1904. The Grieg Collection has Grieg's copy (a present from Edvardine Kuhle) of Dichtergarben, an anthology of poetry by Goethe, Heine, Ruckert and others; Osterlied is the first poem by Bottger in the book. It describes the Easter bells, which ring out heralding not just the festival, but also the coming of spring and an earth which bustles with new life and light. Grieg repeats the first of Bottger's three stanzas again at the end of his setting and he matches the simple imagery of the verse with an unadorned melody in D major. The main interest of the song lies in the harmony where, to simulate the bells, there are long passages of changing chords over syncopated tonic fifths in the bass, a device which foreshadows Klokkeklang (Bell Sounds), no. 6 of book V of the Lyric Pieces, op. 54, written two years later. The chord clusters, as in Foraarsregn, are built up by the use – carefully indicated, bar by bar – of the sustaining pedal and finally, in the postlude, the bells fade away into the distance.

Two further settings of poems by Holger Drachmann also date from the summer of 1889. The first, Simpel Sang (Simple Song), EG 147, was written on 15 June, but published only posthumously. It opens with a similar accompaniment figure and vocal line to Lauf der Welt, op. 48/3, but unfortunately does not maintain the standard of the earlier song. The poem has five long stanzas and, with Grieg's constant use of repeated quaver figures, augmented triads and frequent changes of key, the song becomes tedious and anything but ‘simple’, except perhaps in its lack of inspiration. The ‘simple song’ of the title is that which is sung by the poet to give thanks for his escape from the wrecking of his small craft. The vocal line has a wide range and makes some use of ascending and decending octaves, a characteristic of Grieg's weaker vocal melodies throughout his life. The incessant rhythm is broken in the third stanza, where Grieg attempts to give some musical illustration of the waves that caused the shipwreck.