Fourscore 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 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. 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. 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.
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（来自张放先生的博客）
