On freedom's summit, Oh, how grand
Stood Lincoln ruler of our land,
As he issued the sublime command
Let the enslaved be free.
Ere long he saw the Bondmen rise;
Ere long as Freedmen seize the prize,
The precious boon of liberty.
A backward glance he cast
Into the valley of the past,
Amid the shade and gloom
Discerning slavery's tomb.
Out from the depths his upturned eyes
Beheld the fleeing clouds the brighter skies.
Upon him shone a glory like the sun,
Reflecting "peace toward all, malice toward none."
As thus he filled his high exalted place,
The brave emancipator of a race,
He thought of the fierce struggle and the victory
And humbly deemed himself to be
Only the instrument of a Divine decree.
Rejoicing in the faith of brighter coming days
His "fervent prayers" were merged in those of praise.
Like unto psalmists of the olden time
His uttered thoughts inspired the nation's song,
Throughout the land the chorus rose sublime,
The exultant triumph of the right o'er wrong.
"Behold, what God the Lord hath wrought,"
More than we asked, or hoped, or thought.
Through the "Red sea" of blood and carnage
He brought our nation free of bondage.
With Moses sing, yea shout O North;
With Miriam answer back O South:
That "He hath triumphed gloriously."
. . . . .
Oh why the sudden blotting out of light?
The cloud of sorrow, dark as Plutonian night,
That cast its lengthening shadow o'er the land;
Changing to funeral dirge the choral grand.
Swift as the typhoon's breath--
The harbinger of death--
The cruel deed of hate
Swept the grand chief away.
Unto this day, and ever aye,
The nation mourns her martyr's fate.
[Illustration: Lincoln at Gettysburg]
ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DEDICATION
OF THE CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave
their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we
cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add
or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,--that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave their last full measure of devotion--that we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of
the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.
November 19, 1863. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
"Undoubtedly there were many in the audience who fully appreciated the
beauty of the President's address, and many of those who read it on
the following day perceived its wondrous character; but it is apparent
that its full force and grandeur were not generally recognized then,
either by its auditors or its readers. Not until the war had ended and
the great leader had fallen did the nation realize that this speech
had given to Gettysburg another claim to immortality and to American
eloquence its highest glory."--From the monograph on the Gettysburg
Address, by Maj. William H. Lambert.
Bayard Taylor, born in Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania,
on the 11th of January, 1825. Died in Berlin, Germany, on the 19th of
December, 1878. His boyhood was passed on a farm near Kennett. He
learned to read at four, began to write at an early age, and from his
twelfth year wrote poems, novels and historical essays, but mostly
poems. In 1837 the family moved to Westchester, and there and at
Unionville he had five years of high-school training. His first poem
printed was contributed to the _Saturday Evening Post_, in 1841, and
those to the _New York Tribune_ from abroad, written in 1844, were
widely read and shortly after his return were collected and published
in _Views Afoot, or Europe Seen With Knapsack and Staff_. With a
friend he bought a printing office in 1846, and began to publish the
_Phoenixville Pioneer_, but it was as a poet that he excelled above
most other vocations.