Page:The Army and Navy Hymnal.djvu/294

SERVICE OF COMMEMORATION

V. HOLD HIGH THE TORCH

Leader:
Because you live, though out of sight and reach,
I will, so help me God, live bravely, too,
Taking the road with laughter and gay speech,
Alert, intent to give life all its due. Winifred Letts
Lincoln's Speech at Gettsyburg
Leader:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Assembly:
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether- that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
Leader:
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.
Assembly:
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.
Leader:
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.
Assembly:
The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
Leader:
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.
Assembly:
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.
prayer
Hymn, 153 Beautiful for Spacious Skies

1 O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of gram, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood, From sea to shining sea!

2 O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control. Thy liberty in law! Amen-

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