their officers and men, to the warmest thanks and the richest rewards which a grateful people can pay. But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country there will be no brighter page than that which relates to THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG. 8 HYMN COMPOSED BY B. B. FRENCH, ESQ., AT GETTYSBURG. "Tis holy ground, This spot, where, in their graves, We place our country's braves, Let tears abound. Here let them rest ; And summer's heat and winter's cold A thousand years shall pass away,— A nation still shall mourn this clay, Here, where they fell, Oft shall the widow's tears be shed; Great God in heaven! Shall all this sacred blood be shed? Shall we thus mourn our glorious dead? Oh, shall the end be wrath and woe, The knell of Freedom's overthrow. A country riven? It will not be ! We trust, O God, Thy gracious power To aid us in our darkest hour. This be our prayer,-O Father! save All praise to Thee! DEDICATORY ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 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 battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final restingplace of 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 that they have thus far so nobly carried on. 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 the cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion,-that we here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. DIRGE SUNG AT THE CONSECRATION OF THE SOLDIERS' CEMETERY. WRITTEN BY JAS. G. PERCIVAL. OH, it is great for our country to die! whose ranks are contending; Bright is the wreath of our fame; glory awaits us for aye; Oh, it is sweet for our country to die! how softly reposes Warrior youth on his bier! wet by the tears of his love,— Wet by a mother's warm tears; they crown him with garlands of roses; Not in Elysian fields, by the still oblivious river, Not in the Isles of the blest, over the blue rolling sea, But on Olympian heights shall dwell the devoted for ever; There shal! assemble the good, there the wise, valiant and free. Oh, then how great for our country to die, in the front rank to perish! We shall look forth from our heaven, pleased the sweet music to hear. The Benediction was pronounced by the Rev. H. L. Baugher, D. D., President of Pennsylvania College, Gettysburg. |