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[As a tribute to the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address celebrated this November, Lincoln's speech is anagrammed into a poem about an old battlefield that contains a relevant acrostic down its left side - as well as a visual constraint, detailed below:]
"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.
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 can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not 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."
A virtual voyage in a battlefield's heart
That wealth at noon was quite a view
Here, in the field; how good to note
Each heather here prevailed and grew:
Great growth had formed a heavy coat.
Each youthful bird soared in the air,
Too smooth, too blithe and too naive.
That view may look too fine and fair,
Yet we once heard that looks deceive.
So, what faint thing can no one peep,
Beneath that view of peace and cheer,
Unheard-of, worn and wedged too deep,
Remaining faint too long, for years?
Great fear once ailed that stretch of land,
All through that time of pained contention;
Death governed it when legions grand
Did rotten things we wouldn't mention.
Respected war-gods clenched their teeth,
Each striving to maintain their might;
Steel sabers shot out of their sheaths,
So fiercely keen to clinch those fights;
But clever Earth, then scorched and dried,
Yearned to correct that dream we shattered;
A lot of troops that toiled there died,
But to that earth, it barely mattered:
Red poppies grow where brothers fought
And blades of grass where bodies fell.
Hate, pain and grievance were for naught,
Around that growth where pine trees dwell.
Men, blood-lust and their cannon's flare
Leave no vague trace out here, it seems,
In one vast piece of Heaven, where
No force but Nature reigned supreme.
Cool winds invade all that survived
On heavy vines that brave that chill.
Life carried on - it wants to thrive,
Now that the ground has had its fill.
[In case you haven't spotted it yet, here's a smaller display. This poem is actually Lincoln's silhouette:]
