America The Beautiful
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by Katherine Lee Bates)
O beautiful for spacious skies, O beautiful for pilgrim feet
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About
The words are by Katharine Lee Bates, an English
professor at Wellesley College. 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:
* The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the
"White City" with its promise of the future contained
within its alabaster buildings.
* The wheat fields of Kansas, through which her train
was riding on July 4.
* The majestic view of the Great Plains from atop Pikes
Peak.
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.
Several existing pieces of music were adapted to the
poem. The Hymn tune composed in 1882 by Samuel A. Ward,
was generally considered the best music as early as 1910
and is still the popular tune today. Ward had been
similarly inspired. The tune came to him while he was on
a ferryboat trip from Coney Island back to his home in
New York City after a leisurely summer day, and he
immediately wrote it down. Ward died in 1903, not
knowing the national stature his music would attain.
Miss Bates was more fortunate, as the song's popularity
was well-established by her death in 1929.
At various times in the more than 100 years that have
elapsed since the song as we know it was born,
particularly during the John F. Kennedy administration,
there have been efforts to give "America the Beautiful"
legal status either as a national hymn, or as a national
anthem equal to, or in place of, "The Star-Spangled
Banner", but so far this has not succeeded. Proponents
prefer "America the Beautiful" for various reasons,
saying it is easier to sing, more melodic, and more
adaptable to new orchestrations while still remaining as
easily recognizable as "The Star-Spangled Banner." Some
prefer "America the Beautiful" over "The Star-Spangled
Banner" due to the latter's war-oriented imagery.
(Others prefer "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the same
reason.) While that national dichotomy has stymied any
effort at changing the tradition of the national anthem,
"America the Beautiful" continues to be held in high
esteem by a large number of Americans.
Popularity of the song increased greatly following the
September 11, 2001 attacks; at some sporting events it
was sung in addition to the traditional singing of the
national anthem. During the first taping of the Late
Show with David Letterman following the attacks, CBS
newsman Dan Rather cried briefly as he quoted the fourth
verse.