Finch was educated at the University of Toronto, to which he returned as a professor of French after three years in Paris. His first collection, Poems (1946), won a Governor General's Award, as did a later work, Acis in Oxford (1961), a series of meditations inspired by a performance of G.F. Handel's dramatic oratorio Acis and Galatea. Dover Beach Revisited (1961), treating the World War II evacuation of Dunkirk and issues of faith, contains 11 variations on Matthew Arnold's poem. In another collection, Variations and Theme (1980), Finch describes in 14 poem variations the fate of a rare pink water lily. His later works include Has and Is (1981), The Grand Duke of Moscow's Favorite Solo (1983), and Sail-boat and Lake (1988).