4 Days of “American Moments” part 1 of 4

Recently I came across a YouTube video that showed another verse to The Star Spangled Banner. Did you know there are actually 4 verses to our national anthem? In some formal settings the fourth verse is included.
Here is a link to a YouTube video singing the first through fourth verses with lyrics.

Star Spangled BannerHere is the image of the first actual newspaper print of our national anthem in 1814. Click here to view it.

The Star Spangled Banner

Words: Francis Scott Key, 1814
Tune: Anacreon in Heaven by John Stafford Smith, 1771

O, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare,
The bomb bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O, say does that star spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam
Of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner – O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

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!

O, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must,
When our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

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