Mil's Place: "THINE ALABASTER CITIES GLEAM..."

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Should we change national anthems?
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In the late spring of 1893, Katharine Lee Bates was traveling through Chicago and down across the plains through Kansas, and on to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where she had a summer school teaching appointment. While in Chicago she visited the famous "White City" of the 1893 World Fair. After arriving in Colorado and getting set up and into her work, she did what just about everyone did in those years in that area, she went to the top of Pike's Peak, 14,114 feet above the Southwestern United States, where it seemed she could see....forever.

This majestic panorama, combined with all she had already experienced on her trip, inspired her to write a song or hymn about what she had seen and loved about her country. She said that the words began to come into her mind while on the pinnacle of the mountain, and upon returning to her room she began to work on her poem. Little did she realize that she was writing what really should have become the national anthem of the United States. Originally called "Pike's Peak," her poem was first published in 1895 for the Fourth of July---to great acclaim.

May we just take a moment to analyze her words? This is the stuff of which national anthems are made! Bates writes of "amber waves of grain," "fruited plains," "purple mountain majesties." She brings in the history of our pilgrims who came and courageously "beat a highway for freedom, across the wilderness," thinking of all those pioneers who helped develop our country.

Then she mentions the heroes that have given their lives so that we may have freedom---men who fought in "liberating strife;" and who loved their country more than themselves---"who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life."

The poet then talks about our forefathers and their dreams for the nation: "for patriot dream that sees beyond the years," and tops off this beautiful stanza with a symbolic metaphorical allusion to the mile square 1893 Chicago World Columbian Exposition on the banks of Lake Michigan, where all the buildings were painted or stuccoed white: "thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!"

Speaking as if to the nation itself, she prays: "God mend thine every flaw," "May God thy gold refine"---and she charges the nation--"confirm thy soul in self control," and anchor "thy liberty in law."

"America! America!" Bates almost overflows with praise and excitement; then ends each stanza with a prayer addressed to the Almighty: "God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea." She doesn't forget our oceans!

Samuel A. Ward's excellent tune "Materna," written some years earlier for a hymn "O Mother Dear, Jerusalem," was mated to "Pike's Peak," in 1910 and published as "America, the Beautiful." Since that time it has become a much-loved hymn by the American people. It is occasionally used as a substitute for our national anthem. It has about all the qualities one would expect to see in a national anthem, as noted above. The tune is beautiful, stately, reverent, dignified, easy to sing, harmonious, and good for a four-part choir.

It compares somewhat in simplicity of the tune and down-to-earth text with other national anthems such as "O Canada," "God Save the Queen," and "Advance, Australia Fair."

Here is the hymn:
"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 stern 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 their country loved, and mercy more than life.
America! America! May God thy gold refin
'Til 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."

Our national anthem text, "The Star-Spangled Banner," was written during the War of 1812,
by Francis Scott Key while he was an overnight detainee on a British ship, during the shelling of Ft. McHenry in Chesapeake Harbor. The text was soon wedded to a commonly known, used, and popular British "drinking song," titled "To Anacreon In Heaven." Along with a number of other patriotic-type songs, "The S-SB"was sung all through the 1800's including much use during the Civil War."

It was finally officially adopted as our "national anthem" under Herbert Hoover's administration in 1931. A lot of objections have arisen regarding "The S-SB" as our national anthem, particularly in recent years. One of he main problems with the present anthem, besides the fact that the melody covers an octave and a half, is difficult for most people to sing, and is not generally very harmonious for ensembles or choirs----is that its message is almost completely about war. It extols few of the virtues, qualities, and history of the nation.

Check the (edifying?) qualities in the third stanza of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Contrast this in your mind with any stanza of "America, the Beautiful."

"And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
And the star- spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave."

SO: Is "America, the Beautiful" a better choice for our national anthem than "The Star-Spangled Banner?" First, we'd have to concede that it is a matter of opinion. My opinion is: YES! Katherine Lee Bate's hymn is better; just read the text and sing the beautiful tune!

Should we change anthems? NO. My friends, we are many, many decades too late for that.
Too much history and tradition is involved. And our hard-to-sing anthem (not to even mention those entertainers who can't sing it) has brought us through countless wars, flag raisings aboard ships and military bases; it has started millions of sports events, amateur and professional. Even NASCAR! It was being played at 7:58 a.m. aboard the Arizona and other ships at. Pearl Harbor on that "Day of Infamy," December 7, 1941. Help me out! Where all has it been played? Yes, it is too late to change.

Though all four stanzas are "war-like," we never sing but one anyway. And though, I, the writer, coming from a church music background where texts are vitally important, would generally not agree to this, I am going to have to go with the much-admired and much-respected John Phillip Sousa on this one, when he was commenting on the text of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1931. He said: "It is the spirit of the music that inspires, not the words."

In the case of the anthem, this may well be true.