This song bears all the evidence of having been written by Charles Ives as an assignment for his Yale composition professor Horatio Parker. A musical and pedagogical conservative, Parker followed a well-known practice of assigning his students poems that had already been set by notable composers as songs. Most of these songs were in German, the home of the most important repertory of classical songs (in German, Lieder). "Marie" ("Marie, am Fenster sittest du") is a poem by Rudolf von Gottschall (1823 - 1904) written in praise of his wife. It is a conventional and sentimental statement, mostly comparing her beauty to that of flowers in a garden. It had already been set by composers Adolf Jensen (in 1849) and Robert Franz (around 1860).

By the time Ives compiled his set of 114 Songs he had also made an English-language version of the song by using a translation by Rücker, which he altered. The song is in a swaying 3/4 time, except for one surprising measure of common time (4/4). It is a strophic song in two verses and has a graceful melody, but is considerably weakened by much too often marking the end of stanzas with a dotted-eighth/sixteenth rhythmic device, This chops up the flow of poetry, much like an amateur reader who always pauses at the end of a verse even if the words continue into the next without punctuation.

Ives grouped the song with eight others of (mostly) only moderate inspiration in 114 Songs under the umbrella title "Sentimental Ballads."

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