150 BRUCE TO HIS MEN AT BANNOCKBURN

Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour;

See approach proud Edward's power-1
Chains and slavery!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?

Let him turn and flee!

Wha for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or freeman fa',
Let him follow me!

By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty's in every blow!

Let us do or die!

1 Edward II. of England was the king against whom Bruce

fought successfully at Bannockburn.

CONCORD HYMN.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, APRIL 19, 1836.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,1
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ;

And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On the green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

1 Does this shaft mark the spot where the farmers stood, or where the British fell? Read Emerson's brief Address at the Hundredth Anniversary of the Concord Fight, April 19, 1875, the last piece written out with his own hand. (Cooke, 182.)

SPEECH AT THE DEDICATION OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY, GETTYSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, NOVEMBER 19, 1863.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

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.