So when the summer calleth On forest and field of grain, With an equal murmur falleth The cooling drip of the rain; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Wet with the rain, the Blue; Wet with the rain, the Gray. Sadly, but not with upbraiding, The generous deed was done; In the storm of the years that are fading, No braver battle was won; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Under the blossoms, the Blue; Under the garlands, the Gray. No more shall the war cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red; They banish our anger forever, When they laurel the graves of our dead! Under the sod and the dew Waiting the judgment day; Love and tears for the Blue; Tears and love for the Gray. --_Francis Miles Finch._ Francis Miles Finch, the author of _The Blue and the Gray_, was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1827. He graduated with honor from Yale College in 1845 in his eighteenth year. He studied law and became a practicing lawyer of fine reputation at Ithaca, being elected an associate judge of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York in 1881. In July, 1853, he read a poem at the centennial celebration of the Linonian Society of Yale, in which several lyrics were introduced, including one on Nathan Hale, the patriot spy of the Revolution. This at once achieved wide popularity. His one poem, however, which will carry his name down to the future is _The Blue and the Gray_. Two years after the war of the Rebellion there appeared in the New York _Tribune_, the following item: "The women of Columbus, Mississippi, animated by nobler sentiments than many of their sisters, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers." This, coming at a time when a great deal of the soreness of defeat and the bitterness aroused by the war still remained, seemed to be the first indication of an era of more kindly feeling and a more generous Christian spirit. The eye of a poet is always seeing the poetic possibilities in current incidents, and when Mr. Finch saw this news item in his favorite daily paper, he not only saw the romance and pathos of the situation, but thought that such an exhibition of generosity should be at once met and welcomed in the same temper. It was out of that impulse that _The Blue and the Gray_ grew into being. Mr. Finch sent it to the _Atlantic Monthly_, where it was published in the September number of 1867, prefaced with the news extract from the _Tribune_ which had suggested it. The poem at once aroused marked attention and became popular throughout the entire country, but especially so in the South.