In 1893, Katharine Lee Bates, a poet and English professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, traveled across the country to teach a summer course in Colorado Springs. At the end of the term, she and her colleagues decided to celebrate by taking a prairie wagon up to the summit of Pike’s Peak, otherwise known as America’s Mountain. Upon reaching the summit, she was so moved by the sight of “the sea-like expanse of fertile country . . . under those ample skies,” she wrote a poem. The opening words speak of the beauty she witnessed on that fateful day:
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!
Upon returning to her hotel, Bates completed the remainder of the poem, inspired by the sights of the day and her train journey west, beginning in Niagara Falls, New York to Colorado.
The poem wasn’t published until two years later on July 4, 1895, in the weekly publication, The Congregationalist, to great acclaim.
In 1882, long before Bates’ trip out west, Samuel A. Ward, a composer and organist at Grace Episcopal Church in New Jersey, wrote the tune, “Materna,” which he originally intended as the accompanying music for a hymn, “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem,” published in the 1890s.
In 1903, after Ward had left this Earth, a publisher combined the “Materna” tune with Bates’ poem to create the song, “America the Beautiful.” After several versions, the final edition that we know and love was published in 1913.
Although Ward and Bates never met, their lives are like parallel train tracks—words and music joined together to echo throughout eternity.
Today, “America the Beautiful” is as relevant as ever. As Hymnary.org writes:
“Each stanza of this hymn combines appreciation of America's beauty with prayers to God for His blessings on and aid for the nation. In petitioning God to “mend [America’s] every flaw,” we acknowledge our imperfection as a country. In praying for the unity of brotherhood “from sea to shining sea,” we acknowledge that the disunity that exists is undesirable.”
“America the Beautiful” is more than a song. It is a prayer.
And it is a living reminder that we are truly one nation. Under God. Indivisible.
Scripture for Meditation: “For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.” (Deuteronomy 8:7-10)
Listen Here:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/america-the-beautiful/1751124331?i=1751124332
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B0D6L6C875
Select Links:
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/america-beautiful-1893
https://hymnary.org/text/o_beautiful_for_spacious_skies#tune
https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200000001
https://www.purpleheart.org/static/forms/AmericaTheBeautiful.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_the_Beautiful
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_A._Ward
Cover Photography Credit: Madelyn H Photo, LLC
© Stephanie Bento, House of Riverenza, 2024.
Thank you for sharing the history of our beloved song! It truly is a prayer reminding us that we are one nation under God!
Thank you for your beautiful insights and knowledge!