This is Robert Kennedy’s impromtu speech announcing the death of Martin Luther King Jnr.
He asked the crowd for “an effort to understand, compassion and love.” Then he said:
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote, “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
The weeping, silent listeners had probably never heard of Aeschylus, but they understood what he meant. Kennedy finished:
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Robert Kennedy was assassinated 40 years ago this month. RIP.
