And when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle-shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall,
Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall,
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall shrink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.

Flag of the seas! on ocean wave
Thy stars shall glitter o'er the brave,
When death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frightened waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside's reeling rack;
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly
In triumph o'er his closing eye.

Flag of the free heart's hope and home,
By angel hands to valor given,
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom's soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us!

--_Joseph Rodman Drake._

SPEECH AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY AT GETTYSBURG.

NOVEMBER 18, 1863.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 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 di