The Gettysburg Address

I know that when I started this blog, I stated that it would be for the purpose of publishing poems and thoughts on the subject of poetry.  However, with your approval, I would like to deviate from that slightly in today's post.
This is the 148th anniversary of the giving of the Gettysburg Address by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.  While it is not poetry by the strict sense of the word, it was and still is one of the greatest speeches of all time.  In it, a speech that lasted only two minutes, he captured the spirit of freedom, the greatness of our nation, and the courage and devotion of all honorable soldiers.to the next.
It was in his mind a simple, unimportant speech, and yet it is still remembered to this day, as well it should be.  How much we underestimate the power our words may have, for good or for ill.  How little we grasp how long our words may ring from one end of the earth
Whether you are from America or another nation, this speech captures in it the essence of liberty, a gift that is not just for one nation, but for all lands, peoples and creeds.
May his words change your life as they have mine.

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.

Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865