In 1893, Katharine Lee Bates made a lecture trip to Colorado. It was there On Pike's Peak that she wrote the words to "America the Beautiful." She said, "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' poem first appeared in a weekly newspaper called the "The Congregationalist." There were several revisions before the final version was published in 1913. According to a source from the Library of Congress on Patriotic Melodies, "'America the Beautiful' has been called 'an expression of patriotism at its finest.' It conveys an attitude of appreciation and gratitude for the nation's extraordinary physical beauty and abundance, without triumphalism."
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!
1 comment:
I've been to Pike's Peak--it's breathtaking!
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