America the Beautiful

America the Beautiful, patriotic American hymn, regarded as the United States’ unofficial national anthem and one of the country’s best-known songs. The song extols the grandeur of the American landscape as well as the nation’s ideals. The lyrics were written by American poet, author, and educator Katharine Lee Bates, and the tune was created by American composer Samuel A. Ward.

Inspiration, composition, and publication

“America the Beautiful” found its inception in the summer of 1893. Spurred by a period of depression and the encouragement of Katharine Coman—her close companion and fellow professor at Wellesley College—Bates accepted a seasonal teaching position hosted at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She journeyed from Massachusetts across the country by train, stopping along the way to visit sites such as Niagara Falls in New York and the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The sights she saw during her travels west set the stage for “America the Beautiful.” However, it was during a faculty expedition to the top of Pikes Peak, a summit in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in July 1893 that the words of the song came to her. As she later recounted, “It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.”

Bates began writing the song—originally as a poem—that summer, but she did not send it off for publication for another two years. Originally published under the title “America,” Bates’s poem appeared in the July 4, 1895, edition of The Congregationalist, a weekly newspaper. In the years to come, Bates revised and published the poem several times and eventually renamed it “America, the Beautiful” and later “America the Beautiful.” Different versions can be found in the Boston Evening Transcript as well as in her own book, America the Beautiful and Other Poems (1911). Bates made final additions to the poem in 1913.

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Meaning

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Bates’s poem explored the striking beauty of the American landscape, describing the “purple mountain majesties” that she had seen in Colorado to the “amber waves of grain” in Kansas and “thine alabaster cities” at Chicago’s world’s fair. Bates also celebrated American aspirations and patriotism, with such lines as:

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!

Her words additionally touched upon the struggle for equality in the United States, a reflection of the country’s turmoil as it tried to form its identity during a time of financial and social unrest. Bates was an activist of her time, growing up in a predominantly female household and becoming involved in many social movements, such as the reformist settlement house movement spearheaded by Jane Addams, among others. Thus, when writing and publishing her poem, Bates considered what it meant to unify the people of her nation in an industrialized world in which humanity was growing increasingly isolated from one another and from nature.

Melody

Upon its publication, “America” drew praise; The Congregationalist said that it had “the true patriotic ring.” The first person to set music to Bates’s words was American composer Silas G. Pratt, who added an accompaniment the same year that “America” was published in The Congregationalist. Many composers followed suit. Indeed, more than 60 musical settings have been attached to the lyrics, including well-known melodies such as that for “Auld Lang Syne.”

The most common melody associated with “America the Beautiful” is the piece “Materna,” originally composed by Samuel A. Ward for the hymn “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem” in 1882. “Materna” was first published in accompaniment with “America the Beautiful” in 1910, seven years after Ward’s death. Although Ward never saw the rise of the most popular version of “America the Beautiful,” Bates did, and the song had become widely popular before she died in 1929. During her life, she gave hundreds of permissions for her lyrics to appear in songbooks, poetry readers, manuals, periodicals, and other publications.

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Unofficial national anthem

“America the Beautiful” has been proposed as an alternate U.S. national anthem to “The Star-Spangled Banner” by people who consider the latter to be too “warlike” or “triumphalist” or simply too difficult to sing. As such, it is sometimes played instead of the official anthem at such occasions as U.S. presidential inaugurations, military commemorations, and sports events. The song has been recorded by many popular artists, perhaps most famously by American pianist and soul singer Ray Charles.

1893 version and 1911 version

The original version of the song, published as the poem “America” in 1893, is as follows:

O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife,
When once and twice, for man’s avail,
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

O 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,
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

The 1911 version, published as “America the Beautiful” in Bates’s book, America the Beautiful and Other Poems, features the lyrics by which the song is most commonly known. They are as follows:

O 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!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O 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!

O 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!