This wonderful and famous hymn is a
special combination of national appreciation, religious faith,
historical tribute, and future appeal. Sometimes referred to as the
unofficial national anthem, it has been called “an expression of
patriotism at its finest.” It is a very fitting hymn to study in
the month we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence
of the United States of America. Written in 1893,
its message may be even more pertinent today than it was then. The
first two lines of each verse celebrate the nation’s physical
beauty and abundance and the human attributes that have made the
country great. The last two lines of each verse are prayerful
appeals to God for future blessings and to the people for endeavor in
things that are of great importance: mending flaws, refinement,
brotherhood, self-control, liberty and nobleness.
The poetic language of America the
Beautiful is so well known that we may find ourselves singing the
words without thinking about their meaning. For instance,
another way to say, “Oh, beautiful for…” is, ‘America is
beautiful because of…’ A thoroughfare is a
major road or highway affording passage. A major road makes passage
easier, thus an easier passage for freedom, as the country expanded
through the wilderness, was a great legacy given to us by the daily
walk of the passionate Pilgrims (and Patriots.) The phrase, “Thy
liberty in law,” reminds us that only a law-abiding citizenship can
maintain liberty in a democratic republic, and could also be a
reference to the protection afforded us by the Constitution, and a
reminder of the necessity of upholding it. The author places
emphasis on brotherhood, with the phrase “And crown thy good with
brotherhood” used twice. The poem was written only twenty-three
years after the Civil War ended, and racial segregation was still
common. The allusion to brotherhood as a crowning virtue could be a
reference to the Biblical second great commandment, “Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself.” Alabaster is a
white translucent mineral, and an alabaster city would appear pure
and heavenly as though constructed of opaque white glass. In the last
verse the “patriot’s dream” “sees beyond the years,” and
brings the conjecture that perhaps the Patriot’s hope was that at
the end of time the cities of America would have become as heaven,
where there will be no tears.
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America the Beautiful – Text
Oh, beautiful for spacious
skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain
majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on
thee,
And crown thy good with
brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
Oh, beautiful for pilgrim
feet,
Whose stern, impassioned
stress
A thoroughfare of freedom
beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self
control,
Thy liberty in law.
Oh, beautiful for heroes
proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their
country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be
nobleness,
And every gain divine.
Oh, beautiful for patriot
dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities
gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on
thee,
And crown thy good with
brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.
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The author of America the Beautiful,
Katharine Lee Bates, was born in 1859, the fifth child of William and
Cornelia Frances Lee Bates. William’s family had left England and
settled in Hingham, Massachusetts in 1635. His ancestors would
therefore most likely have been participants during the Revolutionary
War. William was a pastor of the First Congregational Church at
Falmouth on Cape Cod at the time of Katharine’s birth. It is
believed that a back injury sustained in rescuing fellow passengers
from a train wreck in 1853 caused a tumor in his spine, which by May
of 1859 forced him to discontinue preaching. Increasing paralysis
led to his death when Katharine was only a month old. Her mother,
Cornelia, was a graduate of Mount Holyoake Seminary, a school for
young women in South Hadley, Massachusetts, founded in 1837. The
school was one of the most rigorous academic institutions a young
woman could attend at the time, and most only attended for one year.
The poetess Emily Dickinson was one of these. The school also
believed that student’s moral and religious lives were part of its
responsibility. With her mother’s
example, it follows naturally that after the family moved from
Falmouth to Wellesley Hills when she was twelve, Katharine attended
Wellesley High School, graduating in 1874. She then proceeded to the
more advanced Newton High School, graduating in 1878, and then
entered Wellesley College. Thanks to help from her two older
brothers, she graduated in 1880 with a Bachelor of Arts degree,
having served as president of its second graduating class. She wrote
to supplement her income and her poem, “Sleep” was published by
The Atlantic Monthly during her undergraduate years. It is
said that Longfellow praised her for this poem on their first
meeting. Wellesley College is a small liberal arts college for
women, founded in 1875 by Henry and Pauline Durant, who believed
strongly in the higher education of women. It is located west of
Boston, Massachusetts, and became the primary scene of the remainder
of Katharine’s life as she returned there to teach. Her career at
Wellesley College spanned 45 years, and she became chair of the
English department. It is said she believed that through literature,
human values could be revealed and developed. She also studied at
Oxford, England, earned her master’s degree in arts from Wellesley
College and was awarded several honorary degrees. She traveled
several times to Europe and the Middle East on sabbatical and
published travel books based on these experiences, as well as books
of verse, textbooks and children’s stories. She is said to be the
first known writer to introduce “Mrs. Santa Claus” to the
American scene. Katharine Bates was said to have inspired immense
affection and respect, being gracious, witty, popular and scholarly
without being pretentious. She is also reported to have been deeply
religious, although without certain faith in any particular church. Katharine’s
religious faith, New England heritage, literary talent and training
came together to place her in the annals of American History in the
summer of 1893 as she traveled west to lecture at Colorado College in
Colorado Springs. At the close of the session she joined with the
other travelers on an excursion to the top of Pike’s Peak. No
paved road existed at that time, their travel to the top involved
rough riding prairie wagons, pulled halfway by horses, then by mules.
At the fifteen-thousand foot summit the opening lines of “America
the Beautiful” floated into her mind as she “gazed in wordless
rapture over the far expanse of mountain ranges and the sealike sweep
of plain.” The sojourn on the peak was “hardly more than one
ecstatic gaze,” as two of the party became faint with the altitude.
However, she said that when she left Colorado Springs, the four
stanzas were penciled in her notebook. In traveling to Colorado, she
had attended the Chicago World’s Fair, where she said the ‘White
City’ at the Columbian Exhibition “made such strong appeal to
patriotic feeling that it was in no small degree responsible for at
least the last stanza of ‘America the Beautiful.’ It was with
this quickened and deepened sense of America that we went on, my New
England eyes delighting in the wind waved gold of the vast wheat
fields.” The Chicago World’s
Fair of 1893 was organized to commemorate the 400th
anniversary of Columbus’ landfall in the New World. The main
exhibition buildings were chalky white and of neoclassical design
which earned them the moniker of “The White City.” Absorbed in her
work at Wellesley, Katharine Bates kept the poem America the
Beautiful in her notebook for more than two years. She copied it
out and sent it to a weekly denominational paper, The
Congregationalist where it first appeared in print on July
4, 1895. It received an unexpected amount of attention. It was
almost at once set to music by Silas G. Pratt, other tunes were
written and she received so many requests that she revised some
sections to make the phraseology more simple and direct. The new
version was published in The Boston Evening Transcript in
1904. It is reported that she received criticism for using the word
“beautiful,” which some called hackneyed, but she refused to
change it, claiming that it best described America. Only one further
revision took place following the 1904 publication, thereafter it was
copyrighted and protected. Katharine died of
cancer at home in Wellesley in 1929 and her last collection of
verses, America the Dream, was published posthumously.
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The first musical setting for America
the Beautiful by Silas G. Pratt was published in a collection of
famous songs in 1904. For several years the text was sung to almost
any popular song or folk-tune with which the lyrics fit; “Auld Lang
Syne” was commonly used. A hymn-tune written by Samuel A. Ward in
1882 was later adapted to it and first published in 1910. By wide
publication in the song and hymnbooks of the day the melody became
entrenched. The sixteenth century hymn text for which the tune was
originally written began with the words “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem,”
from which the tune name “Materna” derives. Many composers felt
that this tune was inadequate and in 1926 the National Federation of
Music Clubs sponsored a contest and offered a prize for a better
setting. It is said that about six hundred compositions were
submitted, however, a winner was not found and Ward’s music
prevailed. The melody in the sixteen-measure ‘Materna’ hymn
tune is strictly in C major and the harmonization contains similar
chromatic alterations and progressions to those found in popular
songs of the time.
Samuel Augustus Ward was born in
Newark, New Jersey, in 1847. He is believed to be a direct
descendant of the American Statesman, Samuel Ward, who was a
representative to the Continental Congress. It is said that Samuel
was a gifted child, playing the accordion by the age of six, and
giving piano lessons as a teenager. Moving to New York at the age of
sixteen he became a church organist. Samuel studied music under Jan
Pychowski and others in New York City, and returned to found a music
store in Newark, where he taught piano and sold sheet music and
musical instruments. He also did quite a bit of composition. In 1880 he became
organist at Grace Episcopal Church, Newark. In the fall of 1888, a
group of men met in his home for the enjoyment of group singing.
This was the beginning of the Newark Orpheus Club, a male glee club.
After a few months of weekly meetings they were urged by their
friends to give a public performance and this started a tradition of
two concerts per year, which continues to this day. Samuel Ward
conducted the group for fifteen years and is said to have composed or
arranged much of their music during that time. Samuel died at
Newark in 1903, never having met Katharine Bates, nor ever hearing
the completed hymn that put him in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
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