Hymns With A Message: AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

Sunday, July 3, 2016

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

I have decided to go a different direction with my blog this week and in honor of Independence Day in the United States I will share a patriotic song instead of the usual hymn. For my many regular readers who are not in the United States, here this holiday is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, by the Continental Congress,. declaring that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves as a new nation, the United States of America. Also known as the Fourth of July, it is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues, carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, and political speeches and ceremonies. And in honor of this day I have chosen the beautiful patriotic song, "American the Beautiful". The lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates, and the music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward. In 1893, at the age of 33, Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College. Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including 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 America's heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 16; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Zebulon's Pikes Peak. On the pinnacle of 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. Several existing pieces of music were adapted to the poem. A hymn tune composed by Samuel A. Ward was generally considered the best music as early as 1910 and is still the popular tune today. Just as Bates had been inspired to write her poem, Ward, too, was inspired to compose his tune. 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 in 1882. He immediately wrote it down. He was so anxious to capture the tune in his head that he asked fellow passenger friend Harry Martin for his shirt cuff to write the tune on. He composed the tune for the old hymn "O Mother Dear, Jerusalem", retitling the work "Materna". Ward's music combined with Bates's poem were first published together in 1910 and titled "America the Beautiful". At various times 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". Now there is no need for me to discuss the words of this song, for they are self-explanatory. However, I do appreciate the prayer in the second verse, "God mend thine every flaw" because God's mending may be needed now more than ever. As a country we have sinned and strayed from obeying God's precepts. As a nation we have forgotten that God did shed His grace on us in the past. May we return to Godly principles and recognize His grace on us.

1. 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!

2. O beautiful for pilgrim feet,

Whose stern, impassioned stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness!