Finzi started to set William Wordsworth's Immortality Ode when he was in his mid-twenties, but it took him more than two decades to complete it. The piece received its first performance at the 1950 Three Choirs Festival. The poem is a well known philosophical meditation in 11 stanzas (Finzi omitted the 7th and 8th)

which deals with the disappointment of life. The first stanza - "There was a time when meadow, grove and stream (…) to me did seem apparelled in celestial delight" - opens at the extreme pianissimo. A six-minute orchestral introduction builds slowly to a climax, and then turns into pensive mood, preparing for the entrance of the tenor. The second - "The rainbow comes and goes" - follows without a break. At its conclusion, a brief interlude precedes the change of pace to the rhythmical joy of the third stanza - "Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song" -. The fourth begins in proclamatory mode - "Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call" - but soon descends into the sadness of the contemplation of "where is it now, the glory and the dream?". The fifth continues in the same mood - "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting" - and so does the brief sixth stanza - "Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own" - which fades quietly. The ninth stanza follows without a break, building up the intensity for the proclamation by the chorus - "O joy! that in out embers" -. The tenth opens in animated mood, announced by the percussion - "Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!" - but soon quiets down to the sobering words "We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind". The eleventh begins with the tenor in pensive mood - "And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills and groves" which continues to the last words, "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears". The orchestra reflects the quiet atmosphere, fading away just like the beginning.

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