I crawled. I could not speak or see — Stephen Vincent Benét

"I stumbled, slipped... and all was gone That I had gained. Once more I lay Before the long bright Hell of ice. And still the light was far away. There was red mist before my eyes Or I could tell you how I went Across the swaying firmament, A glittering torture of cold stars, And how I fought in Titan wars... And died... and lived again upon The rack... and how the horses strain When their red task is nearly done. . . I only know that there was Pain, Infinite and eternal Pain. And that I fell — and rose again."

"Im waiting. … For something new and strange, Something Ive dreamt about in some deep sleep, Truer than any waking, Heard about, long ago, so long ago, In sunshine and the summer grass of childhood, When the sky seems so near. I do not know its shape, its will, its purpose And yet all day its will has been upon me, More real than any voice I ever heard, More real than yours or mine or our dead childs, More real than all the voices there upstairs, Brawling above their cups, more real than light. And there is light in it and fire and peace, Newness of heart and strangeness like a sword, And all my body trembles under it, And yet I do not know."

"Something begins, begins; Starlit and sunlit, something walks abroad In flesh and spirit and fire. Something is loosed to change the shaken world."

"Perhaps tis not strictly in accordance with the evidence … but even the damned may salute the eloquence of Mr. Webster."

"He started off in a low voice, though you could hear every word. They say he could call on the harps of the blessed when he chose. And this was just as simple and easy as a man could talk. But he didnt start out by condemning or reviling. He was talking about the things that make a country a country, and a man a man. And he began with the simple things that everybodys known and felt — the freshness of a fine morning when youre young, and the taste of food when youre hungry, and the new day thats every day when youre a child. He took them up and he turned them in his hands. They were good things for any man. But without freedom, they sickened. And when he talked of those enslaved, and the sorrows of slavery, his voice got like a big bell. He talked of the early days of America and the men who had made those days. It wasnt a spread-eagle speech, but he made you see it. He admitted all the wrong that had ever been done. But he showed how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors."

"He shall not come to conquest, The conquest of kings, But in the bare stable He shall judge all things."