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America the Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious skies, America! America! O beautiful for pilgrim feet America! America! America! America! America! America! O beautiful for halcyon skies, America! America! O beautiful for pilgrims feet, America! America! O beautiful for glory-tale America! America! O beautiful for patriot dream
We owe the inspiration for the lyrics of the beloved song, "America the Beautiful." to the stunning vistas from the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado. It was the summer of 1893, and Katharine Lee Bates, a professor of English at Wellesley College, was in Colorado Springs to teach a summer session at Colorado College. On July 22, Katharine, along with several others of the visiting faculty, took a trip in a carriage to the summit of Pikes Peak. Horses got them to the halfway point, and, as was customary, a team of mules finished the climb to the 14,110 foot summit. Because of altitude sickness of one of the party, they only stayed on the summit a half hour, but the brief exposure was enough to awaken an inspiration. She wrote.. "An erect, decorous group, we stood at last on that Gate-of-Heaven summit...and gazed in wordless rapture over the far expanse of mountain ranges and sealike sweep of plain. Then and there the opening lines of 'America the Beautiful' sprang into being." ..... "I wrote the entire song on my return that evening to Colorado Springs." It first appeared in print in The Congregationalist two years later, and within a few months Silas G. Pratt set it to music. In 1904, after receiving many requests for use in publications and special services, Katharine Lee Bates rewrote it to simplify the text. She made one additional change in the wording of the third stanza a few years later, to give us the version we know today. Over sixty original musical settings, some by distinguished musicians, have been written for the hymn. The music by S.A. Ward became the most widely accepted version and is the one still used today. |
