In substance of thought and in form of its presentation the speech is as perfect a poem as ever was written, and even in the minor qualities of artistic language--rhythm and cadence, phonetic euphony, rhetorical symbolism, and that subtle reminiscence of a great literary and spiritual inheritance, the Bible, which stands to us as Homer did to the ancients--it excels the finest gem to be found in poetic cabinets from the Greek Anthology downward. Only because it was not written in the typography of verse, with capitalized and paragraphed initial words at the beginning of each thought-group of words, has it failed of recognition as a poem by academic minds. Had Walt Whitman composed the address, and printed it in the above manner, it would now appear in every anthology of poetry published since its date. To convince of this those conventional people who must have an ocular demonstration of form in order to compare the address with accepted examples of poetry, I will dare to incur the condemnation of those who rightly look upon such a departure from Lincoln's own manner of writing the speech as profanation, and present it in the shape of _vers libre_. For the latter class of readers this, the greatest poem by Lincoln, the greatest, indeed, yet produced in America, may be preferably read in the original form on page 100 of this collection. I trust that these, especially if they are teachers of literature, will pardon, for the sake of others less cultivated in poetic taste, what may appear a duplication here, unnecessary to themselves, of the address. SPEECH AT GETTYSBURG By ABRAHAM LINCOLN 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.