The Bliss Text

"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.