{"id":20554,"date":"2013-07-04T14:04:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-04T19:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=20554"},"modified":"2013-07-05T10:46:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T15:46:32","slug":"america-the-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2013\/07\/america-the-beautiful\/","title":{"rendered":"America the Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pikes<\/a>In the summer of 1893, Katharine Lee Bates traveled from Boston, where she was an English professor at Wellesley College, to Colorado to teach a session at Colorado College. While in Colorado Springs, she climbed Pikes Peak<\/a>, and at the top of the 14,155 foot summit, she began to fashion in her mind the words to the poem that became \u201cAmerica the Beautiful.\u201d When she came down from the mountain, she finished the poem at her hotel. The poem was published two years later in The Congregationalist<\/em>. The original title of the poem was \u201cAmerica. A poem for July 4.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the poem was recast into a hymn by Samuel A. Ward in 1910, the title changed to \u201cAmerica the Beautiful.\u201d Ward was on a ferry in New York when he thought of the tune. In a moment of inspiration, and so he wouldn\u2019t forget the tune, Ward borrowed a friend\u2019s shirt cuff and jotted the notes down on it.<\/p>\n

Bates traveled to Colorado by train, and she saw several places that you can see in the poem: the wheat fields of Kansas, the buildings of the Chicago World\u2019s Fair, and the Great Plains.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“America the Beautiful”<\/p>\n

O beautiful for spacious skies,
\nFor amber waves of grain,
\nFor purple mountain majesties
\nAbove the fruited plain!<\/p>\n

America! America!
\nGod shed His grace on thee,
\nAnd crown thy good with brotherhood
\nFrom sea to shining sea!<\/p>\n

America! America!
\nMay God thy gold refine
\nTill all success be nobleness,
\nAnd ev’ry gain divine.<\/p>\n

O beautiful for patriot dream
\nThat sees beyond the years
\nThine alabaster cities gleam
\nUndimmed by human tears.<\/p>\n

America! America!
\nGod shed His grace on thee,
\nAnd crown thy good with brotherhood
\nFrom sea to shining sea.<\/p>\n

Other mountains and majestic places in the U.S. could easily have been the source of inspiration for the poem, had Bates traveled there instead of Pikes Peak. So much could be said about beautiful places in the U.S., but Yellowstone and the Tetons\u00a0come to mind. Yellowstone National Park <\/a>was the first national park in the U.S. It took two years to create Yellowstone park; President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Act in 1872, creating a 2.2 million acre park. The park\u2019s main purpose was to protect the\u00a0geysers and hot springs, as well as the wildlife. Nearby is the Teton Range. The creation of Grand Teton National <\/a>Park was more controversial; it took 50 years to create the park in 1950. The park<\/a> also benefitted from donations of land by John D. Rockefeller, who bought up properties and gave them to the National Park Service. We are so very lucky to have a national park system<\/a> in the U.S. to protect and preserve these special places. We are also lucky to have people like John Muir <\/a>and Aldo Leopold<\/a> (both from Wisconsin) to lead us in the preservation and celebration of the wild places in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the summer of 1893, Katharine Lee Bates traveled from Boston, where she was an English professor at Wellesley College, to Colorado to teach a session at Colorado College. While in Colorado Springs, she climbed Pikes Peak, and at the top of the 14,155 foot summit, she began to fashion in her mind the words […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}