"Fourscore 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 the 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."
| A SIGHT in camp in the day-break grey and dim, | |
| As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless, | |
| As slow I walk in the cool fresh air, the path near by the hospital tent, | |
| Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there, untended lying, | |
| Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket, | 5 |
| Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all. | |
| Curious, I halt, and silent stand; | |
| Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first, just lift the blanket: | |
| Who are you, elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-grey’d hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes? | |
| Who are you, my dear comrade? | 10 |
| Then to the second I step—And who are you, my child and darling? | |
| Who are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming? | |
| Then to the third—a face nor child, nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory; | |
| Young man, I think I know you—I think this face of yours is the face of the Christ himself; | |
| Dead and divine, and brother of all, and here again he lies. | 15 |
| WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long, | |
| And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes, | |
| And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant, | |
| There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me: | |
| The engagement opens there and then, in fantasy unreal; | 5 |
| The skirmishers begin—they crawl cautiously ahead—I hear the irregular snap! snap! | |
| I hear the sounds of the different missiles—the short t-h-t! t-h-t! of the rifle balls; | |
| I see the shells exploding, leaving small white clouds—I hear the great shells shrieking as they pass; | |
| The grape, like the hum and whirr of wind through the trees, (quick, tumultuous, now the contest rages!) | |
| All the scenes at the batteries themselves rise in detail before me again; | 10 |
| The crashing and smoking—the pride of the men in their pieces; | |
| The chief gunner ranges and sights his piece, and selects a fuse of the right time; | |
| After firing, I see him lean aside, and look eagerly off to note the effect; | |
| —Elsewhere I hear the cry of a regiment charging—(the young colonel leads himself this time, with brandish’d sword;) | |
| I see the gaps cut by the enemy’s volleys, (quickly fill’d up, no delay;) | 15 |
| I breathe the suffocating smoke—then the flat clouds hover low, concealing all; | |
| Now a strange lull comes for a few seconds, not a shot fired on either side; | |
| Then resumed, the chaos louder than ever, with eager calls, and orders of officers; | |
| While from some distant part of the field the wind wafts to my ears a shout of applause, (some special success;) | |
| And ever the sound of the cannon, far or near, (rousing, even in dreams, a devilish exultation, and all the old mad joy, in the depths of my soul;) | 20 |
| And ever the hastening of infantry shifting positions—batteries, cavalry, moving hither and thither; | |
| (The falling, dying, I heed not—the wounded, dripping and red, I heed not—some to the rear are hobbling;) | |
| Grime, heat, rush—aid-de-camps galloping by, or on a full run; | |
| With the patter of small arms, the warning s-s-t of the rifles, (these in my vision I hear or see,) | |
| And bombs busting in air, and at night the vari-color’d rockets. Walt Whitman |