Ives left a manuscript of a song called "The Ending Year," an ink copy dated 1902. He wrote on the title page, "put in E major (mezzo)," which appears to be a self-instruction towards Ives' setting new words to it.

In 1898 Ives had a particular interest in the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. In that year he wrote "The Only Son," Kz 52a, "The Love Song of Har Dyal," Kz 54, and "Tarrant Moss," Kz 55a, all to Kipling poetry.

Ives' editor John Kirkpatrick (who as a pianist was also an early champion of Ives' great Piano Sonata No. 2, "Concord, Mass.") became convinced that the two last-named of that list were intended as past of a project with some such name as Three Poems of Kipling. His main support for that opinion was that "The Love Song"'s manuscript was headed with Roman numeral "III" and that "Tarrant Moss" was to be number II of the set.

This left the question as to what was supposed to be the first song? Not, Kirkpatrick thought, "The Only Son." This left the question as to what was the song that originally occupied slot number one of the conjectural Three Poems of Kipling?

In growing through Ives' songs of that period, Kirkpatrick found one that seemed the most likely candidate: "The Ending Year." The pianist-editor observed what he took to be "strained" repetitions of words and "stiff" rhythms in that song and concluded these defects were caused by the words being set to pre-existing music. Therefore, he thought, there was a missing "original text" to "The Ending Year," which Kirkpatrick thought, therefore, must have been the original No. 1 in Three Poems of Kipling.

But then what was that missing "original text"? Kirkpatrick searched through all of Kipling's writings, looking for poetry that fitted the music of "The Ending Year." Kirkpatrick described as "the likeliest candidate" Kipling's poem "The Song of the Dead," which appeared in 1893 as part of The Song of the Dead and was reprinted (with some changed by the poet) in the 1896 edition of that publication.

Kirkpatrick concluded that Ives would have used the 1896 text, which he thought fit the music in question better than "The Ending Year." He went so far as to publish a version of "The Ending Year" with Kipling's words and titled "The Song of the Dead" in his edition of Ives' early songs, and applied the number Kz 56a to it.

In defense of his decision, he said "The poem has just the right solemn intensity to draw forth the music." Yet in a contradictory conclusion he also thought "The Ending Year," in G major, "...lay too high for the solemnity of 'The Song of the Dead.'" However, in E major—the key Ives suggested in his note on the ink manuscript—it took on the right tone in Kirkpatrick's opinion, and so published "The Song of the Dead" in that key, making it substantially identical, musically, to "The Waiting Soul."

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