"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
battle-field 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."
The Bliss Text
And for we
who live and follow after
There is a
freedom
That makes truly free.
Verily,
verily, I say unto you
Except a man be born, again.
And in these
fields of battle,
Earth-wide, Gettysburg
To Leyte
Gulf, there are in portions
The final resting places
Of men, and
women, and children
Who gave the last full measure
Of their
love of life, and freedom
For mankind, and fullness,
Satisfaction,
and great joy, that
This Freedom of the Son of Man
Might not perish from the earth.
And this
deep note
Thrums bassly beneath the clay
The stone,
and the water
Erupting in climactic ecstasies
As Love
does, from time to time,
And place to place in the
Praise of
every tongue, and nation, under God.
And we who
live, and follow after
Have poor power to either add or
detract
From all the
hand of God alone accomplishes,
His mighty arm, outstretched
Treading
alone, the grapes of wrath.
And we who
live, and follow after
Must also, together with them
Take
increased devotion to the cause of freedom
First from despair, and then
from un-forgiveness,
And from
want, and from oppression
Let justice pour down
In a never
ending stream, and righteousness
Like the pounding of the sea.
That vast
sea
Which will bring the nations of
the earth
To the New
Jerusalem, and the worship of the Lamb.
