"Undoubtedly there were many in the audience who fully appreciated the beauty of the President's address, and many of those who read it on the following day perceived its wondrous character; but it is apparent that its full force and grandeur were not generally recognized then, either by its auditors or its readers. Not until the war had ended and the great leader had fallen did the nation realize that this speech had given to Gettysburg another claim to immortality and to American eloquence its highest glory."--From the monograph on the Gettysburg Address, by Maj. William H. Lambert. Bayard Taylor, born in Kennett Square, Chester County, Pennsylvania, on the 11th of January, 1825. Died in Berlin, Germany, on the 19th of December, 1878. His boyhood was passed on a farm near Kennett. He learned to read at four, began to write at an early age, and from his twelfth year wrote poems, novels and historical essays, but mostly poems. In 1837 the family moved to Westchester, and there and at Unionville he had five years of high-school training. His first poem printed was contributed to the _Saturday Evening Post_, in 1841, and those to the _New York Tribune_ from abroad, written in 1844, were widely read and shortly after his return were collected and published in _Views Afoot, or Europe Seen With Knapsack and Staff_. With a friend he bought a printing office in 1846, and began to publish the _Phoenixville Pioneer_, but it was as a poet that he excelled above most other vocations. GETTYSBURG ODE After the eyes that looked, the lips that spake Here, from the shadows of impending death, Those words of solemn breath, What voice may fitly break The silence, doubly hallowed, left by him? We can but bow the head, with eyes grown dim, And, as a Nation's litany, repeat The phrase his martyrdom hath made complete, Noble as then, but now more sadly sweet: "Let us, the Living, rather dedicate Ourselves to the unfinished work, which they Thus far advanced so nobly on its way, And saved the periled State! Let us, upon this field where they, the brave, Their last full measure of devotion gave, Highly resolve they have not died in vain!-- That, under God, the Nation's later birth Of freedom, and the people's gain Of their own Sovereignty, shall never wane And perish from the circle of the earth!" From such a perfect text, shall Song aspire To light her faded fire, And into wandering music turn Its virtue, simple, sorrowful, and stern? His voice all elegies anticipated; For, whatsoe'er the strain, We hear that one refrain: "We consecrate ourselves to them, the Consecrated!"