The Sisseton weekly standard. (Sisseton, Roberts County, S.D.) 1892-1929, 1905-05-26

Great events always set the poets
to rhyming. They tune up their hearts
and Tyres, and couplets, sonnets, bal
lads-every form of poetic expression
is made to lend itself to the pen of the
rhymester. Some of these poems in
spired by great public events are very
good and some very bad when subject
ed to the highest literary test. Some
of the worst outlive the best Inc
most jingling rhymes often catch the
popular fancy, while the lofty note
struck by the really great singer is I'M
needed or soon forgotten, says writ
er in the Boston Herald.
We have not in all of our American
history more thrilling events than
some Of those which gave rise. to
many Of our war poems. and the cir
cumstances under which some of
these songs and poems were written
add much to their value and interest.
Poetry is usually the child of enthu-
siasm, but some of our war poetry was
born of trial and sorrow.
OF all the songs born of our great
civil war, none have appealed alike to
the North and the South as have
poems written when the smoke of bat
tie had died away, the dead had been
buried, the conflict ended and good
men and women were trying to unite
the triumphant North and the defeat
ed South. The fires of hatred had not
ceased to burn when the camp fires
died out. Men and women in both
the North and the South were count
ing the cost of the four years strug
gle, and that cost included SO many
graves that it was hard for either
party to forgive and forget.
A little band of women in Colum-
bus, Miss, did not know that they
were pouring a few drops of oil on
the troubled waters when in the
spring of 1867 they decorated the
graves of the boys who had worn the
blue and the boys who had worn the
gray lying in the cemetery near the
town The New York Tribune the
next day contained this dispatch:
"'The women OF Columbus, Miss, ami
mated by nobler sentiments than are
many of their sisters. have shown
themselves impartial in their offerings
to the memory of the dead. They
strewed flowers alike on the graves of
the Confederate and the Federal sol.
diers"
The Blue and the Gray"
1t is not to be wondered at that this
beautiful incident suggested a poem
to one in whom there was the spirit
of true poetry. Francis Miles Finch,
whose home was in Ithaca, N. Y, read
the dispatch and was impressed by the
fact that the incident indicated that
the South was holding out a friendly
hand, and that there should be some
response to it. His beautiful poem.
The Blue and the Gray" was his own
personal response to this friendly
overture.
Mr.. Finch, then a lawyer of about
40 years of age, had no poetical asp.
rations. but he felt that he would like
to have at least this one poem pub
lished; therefore he sent it to the
Atlantic Monthly in Boston, and it
appeared in this magazine in Septem-
her of the year 1867. The poem made
little impression at first, but finally
the newspapers began to copy it, and
objections to it's sentiment began to be
heard by soldiers in the North. and
there we're a number Of poetical re
plies" to it.
The poem became the subject of
newspaper editorials, and there was
good deal of scathing criticism that