Finzi began work on this piece sometime in the late 1920s, around the same time he was writing his Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano & orchestra; he originally intended to incorporate both pieces into a concerto—not necessarily the same concerto—but nothing came of that plan. Finzi reworked the Eclogue twice so that it could stand alone, but it wasn't published or performed until 1957, one year after his death.

An eclogue is a poem in which shepherds converse; the genre originated with poets of classical antiquity, notably Virgil, and became popular again in the sixteenth century, often expanded into full-length plays or operas. Finzi's Eclogue is a comparatively modest quarter-hour movement for piano and strings. It begins with a gentle melody for piano, written for two imitative voices and featuring the occasional ornament that ties the music to its sixteenth century inspiration. The string orchestra enters with its own brief statement of the theme, but almost immediately withdraws to the subsidiary role it will play through most of the work. The piece progresses through a series of elaborations on the theme, building to a midpoint climax that manages to be both stately and passionate, but soon falling back to simpler, almost singsong material inspired by the skeleton of the principal melody. The strings take over for what seems to be the traditional buildup to a cadenza, but in this case the solo piano passage that follows is merely a low-key, bittersweet treatment of the material. The shepherd-lovers apparently part company at this point, as they so often do in eclogues, for the closing pages of the score are dark and resigned.

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