When Charles Ives began to compile his large self-published collection of 114 Songs he included some early works once he decided the volume was to be representative of his of his career and development as an artist.

The Waiting Soul originated as Hear Now the Song of the Dead, to words of Rudyard Kipling, in 1898. This was Ives' senior year at Yale, when he was the student of the conservative music professor Horatio Parker. However, its unconventional aspects, including its ending on an unresolved dissonance, makes it more likely that it was written for John C. Griggs, the choirmaster of Center Church in New Haven, CT, where Ives worked an organist during his college years, who was considerably more open to Ives' experimentation.

Then in 1902 Ives decked the song with new words, calling it The Ending Year. Since Griggs dropped in on the Thanksgiving party Ives and his roommates in New York had in 1902, it is also likely that Ives sang this version.

In 1908 Ives made further revisions and yet a third text, by William Cowper. This English poet (who pronounced his name "Cooper") was the writing partner of John Newton in creating the famous Olney Hymnal, a predecessor of the type of religious Revival music Ives liked very much.

This song has a slow march-like rhythm and is unusually free in its chromaticism. Otherwise, it lacks the radical aspects expected in Ives and seems a bit threadbare in its reliance on scalewise passages and chant-like passages on single notes.

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