English Recitation of Famous Works

Author: Ding Dagang, Sun Ran / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features:
87 years before the Gettysburg Address, our forefathers founded a new nation on this continent, 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 this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, from a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far more than we can. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. Rather, it is for us the living to be dedicated here to the great task remaining before us—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 dear and noble sacrifices shall not have been in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. P3-4