America the Beautiful USA Patriotic Song lyrics YouTube movie MIDI

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America the Beautiful

About Anthem

"America the Beautiful" is an American patriotic song which rivals "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the United States, in popularity.

The words are by Katharine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, where she lived in a 25-year Boston marriage with another professor, Katharine Coman. In 1893, Bates had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College, and several of the sights on her trip found their way into her poem:

On that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel. The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, to commemorate the Fourth of July. It quickly caught the public's fancy. Amended versions were published in 1904 and 1913.

Lyrics

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 pilgrims' feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!

  

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry 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,
'Til all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine!

  

Oh beautiful, for patriot's 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.