Winning Orations of the Inter-state Oratorical Contests, Volume 2

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Charles Edgar Prather
Crane, 1908 - Orators

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Page 245 - Makes mouths at the invisible event, Exposing what is mortal, and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger dare, Even for an egg-shell.
Page 53 - He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves beside. There's not a chain That hellish foes, confederate for his harm, Can wind around him, but he casts it off With as much ease as Samson his green withes.
Page 309 - God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle-line, Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine — Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget! The tumult and the shouting dies; The captains and the kings depart: Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget — lest we forget!
Page 107 - As come it will for a' that — That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, May bear the gree, and a' that ; For a' that, and a' that, It's coming yet for a' that, That man to man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a
Page 319 - WHEN a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west, And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full.blossomed on the thorny stem of Time.
Page 312 - Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Page 242 - Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand, Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd...
Page 337 - He called to a drummer boy and ordered him to beat a retreat. The lad replied : "Sire, I do not know how. Dessaix has never taught me retreat, but I can beat a charge. Oh, I can beat a charge that would make the dead fall into line! I beat that charge at the Bridge of Lodi ; I beat it at Mount Tabor; I beat it at the Pyramids; Oh, may I beat it here?
Page 199 - Take up the White Man's burden Ye dare not stoop to less Nor call too loud on freedom To cloak your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your Gods and you.
Page 78 - Stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces ; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man ! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more ; and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar.

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