Katharine Lee Bates - born in Falmouth, Massachusetts
Teacher, Poet and Author of "America The Beautiful"
The most widely sung and most beloved hymn of patriotism written in this country is from the pen of Miss Katharine Lee Bates, for many years Professor of English Literature at Wellesley College.
In 1893 Miss Bates stopped in Chicago on her way to Colorado, where she was on the faculty of a notable summer school. Visiting the World's Fair, the symbolic beauty of the White City greatly impressed her.
Going thence to Colorado Springs she saw the Rockies for the first time and spent three weeks at the foot of their "purple mountain majesties." At the close of the summer school Miss Bates with a party ascended Pike's Peak. Speaking of her brief ecstatic gaze from the summit, she says: "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. When we left Colorado Springs the four stanzas were penciled in my notebook, together with other memoranda, in verse and prose, of the trip. The Wellesley work soon absorbed time and attention again, the notebook was laid aside, and I do not remember paying heed to these verses until the second summer following, when I copied them out and sent them to The Congregationalist, where they first appeared in print July 4, 1895. The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention. It was almost at once set to music by Silas G. Pratt. Other tunes were written for the words and so many requests came to me, with still increasing frequency ,that in 1904 I rewrote it, trying to make the phraseology more simple and direct." The new version first appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, November 19, 1904.
Miss Bates said she had "given hundreds, perhaps thousands of free permissions for its use." It has gone not only to every corner of the land, but is sung in Australia, substituting that country's name for America. It is sung in Canada with the refrain "O Canada," and in Mexico with the refrain `'Mi Mejico."
It has been sung to various old tunes and to many new ones, for it has been set to music more often than any hymn in a hundred years, yet no single tune has found universal acceptance or sung itself straight into the common heart of the Nation. Whatever vogue any of the old tunes used with it have had is because the words were so loved that the most convenient vehicle at hand and ready made we seized for lack of anything better.
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America The Beautiful
by Katharine Lee Bates
(1913 Final Version of “America The Beautiful”)
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 sterm 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 the 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!
Falmouth's Statue in front of the Falmouth Public Library