I am not tired. I am expectant as a runner is Before a race, a child before a feast day, A woman at the gates of life and death, Expectant for us all… - Stephen Vincent Benét

We had a rock to defend, and we defended it. And the name of that rock is Liberty, and in that name I speak. For Liberty can be lost by the practical men whose hearts are too shrunken to contain it. Liberty can be bartered away by the greedy minds who cannot see beyond their own day. Liberty can be stolen away by the robber and the brute. But Liberty grows like grass in the hearts of the common people, from the blood of their martyrs. And the tyrants rage and are gone, but the dream and the deed endure — and I endure. It is I who command men and win battles. I have called them forth in the past, I am calling them forth today. I call the brave to the battle-line, I call the sane to the council — I call the free millions of earth to the century ahead — the century of the common man, established by you, the people. For this world cannot endure, half slave and half free! My name is FREEDOM and my command today is ... Unite!

I'm your narrator. It's my task to say Just where and how things happen in our play, Set the bare stage with words instead of props And keep on talking till the curtain drops. … It's an old task — old as the human heart, Old as those bygone players and their art Who, in old days when faith was nearer earth, Played out the mystery of Jesus' birth In hall or village green or market square For all who chose to come and see them there, And, if they knew that King Herod, in his crown, Was really Wat, the cobbler of the town, And Tom, the fool, played Abraham the Wise, They did not care. They saw with other eyes. The story was their own — not far away, As real as if it happened yesterday, Full of all awe and wonder yet so near, A marvelous thing that could have happened here In their own town — a star that could have blazed On their own shepherds, leaving them amazed, Frightened and questioning and following still To the bare stable — and the miracle.

I knew then that they had been men, neither gods nor demons. It is a great knowledge, hard to tell and believe. They were men — they went a dark road, but they were men.