If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.

Delivered at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967. Full "What Is Your Life's Blueprint?" text, via The Seattle Times.

The lines to the students originate in King's challenging sermon, "The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life," delivered in Chicago in April.

"Darker yet may be the night, harder yet may be the fight. Just stand up for that which is right." [Beams of Heaven]

It seems that I can hear a voice speaking even this morning, saying to all of us, "Stand up for what is right. Stand up for what is just. Lo, I will be with you even until the end of the world." Yes, I've seen the lightning flash. I've heard the thunder roll. I've felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. And I go on in believing that. Reach out and find the breadth of life.

Was going to link Beams of Heaven. Finding this audio, I had to embed.

Full lyrics are here. "Oftentimes my sky is clear, joy abounds without a tear; though a day so bright begun, clouds may hide tomorrow's sun. There'll be a day that's always bright, a day that never yields to night, and in its light the streets of glory, I shall behold someday…"

In the scope of history or in personal struggle. The lesson of the day is trying your hardest for a long time without finding success doesn't mean you've found failure. It means you haven't found success yet. I know my heart can run long but fall short, and I know so can yours.

Martin Luther King's "Unfulfilled Dreams" sermon turns up in Google. "Life is a continual story of shattered dreams," he says at one point.

Later, we hear: "Well, that is the story of life. And the thing that makes me happy is that I can hear a voice crying through the vista of time, saying: 'It may not come today or it may not come tomorrow, but it is well that it is within thine heart. It's well that you are trying.' You may not see it. The dream may not be fulfilled, but it's just good that you have a desire to bring it into reality. It's well that it's in thine heart."

With such promise, we can go wrong. We can momentarily give up on a friend, lash out at others or much worse, for far longer. Desire can do wrong in pursuit of promise. "It's a civil war. I don't care who you are, I don't care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life.  … There's a tension at the heart of human nature. And whenever we set out to dream our dreams and to build our temples, we must be honest enough to recognize it." But when we pick up, the promise remains.