The Buckley School's founder believed that all public speakers should hone their presentation skills by reading poetry out loud. We keep that worthwhile practice alive by including a poem in our magazine each month for you to read aloud.
While working with a group in Colorado, we were encouraged to travel to Pike's Peak in order to see what had inspired one of America's best-known songs. And though our student got the poet's name wrong (saying it was Clara Barton), he did motivate us to seek out the story behind the lines every U.S. citizen thinks they know.
Katharine Lee Bates, a poet and English professor at Wellesely College, made her way by train to Colorado in 1893. On a July day, she headed to Pike's Peak, where the lines of her poem "America" began to form in her head. It was published two years later, and by 1900 some 75 different melodies had been written to make her poem a song.
The melody that's stuck is a tune by hymn composer Samuel Ward. Over the years, the lines of her poem changed as the song become an anthem of patriotism. The song was popular in Bates's lifetime and has only grown in popularity since.
Phrases from her verse, such as from sea to shining sea, are now part of how we talk about the United States. The line purple mountain majesties describes her view of Pike's Peak and inspired the Colorado Rockies to make purple their team color.
As for the poet, Bates was an advocate for women's rights, suffrage, social justice, and education. Throughout her life, she paired her deep sense of national pride with progressive ideals.
In writing about Bates and the story behind her most famous poem, author Lynn Sherr points out that Bates's poem has the same meter as "Auld Lang Syne" and that the songs can be sung interchangeably.
Below, we provide Bates's original lines. We challenge you to read it out loud, fight your urge to phrase it as its sung, and see what happens.
America
By Katharine Lee Bates
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America, America!
God shed His grace on thee,
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America, America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife,
When once or twice, for man's avail,
Men lavished precious life!
America, America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain,
The banner of the free!
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
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!
