| Lyrics: | The Star Spangled Banner
(The Defense of Fort McHenry)
September 20, 1814
By Francis
Scott Key
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed 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 rockets' red
glare, the bombs 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, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the
morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on 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 wiped out their foul
footstep's 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.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between
their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued
land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for
our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: |
