July 4, 2014: America the Beautiful (Homily delivered at Our Lady of the Pines)
In the summer of 1893, a thirty-six
year-old English professor at Wellesley
College in Massachusetts, had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a
short summer school session at Colorado
College. Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they
found their way into a poem, including the World's Fair in Chicago, the "White City"
with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings; the
wheat fields of America's heartland Kansas, through
which her train was riding on July 16; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Zebulon's Pikes Peak.
On the
pinnacle of that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and
she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers
Hotel in downtown Colorado Springs. The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist, to
commemorate the Fourth of July. It quickly caught the public's fancy.
I can think of no better words that
those of Katherine Lee Bates to share with you this day, this 4th of
July, this Independence Day 2014, here in Colorado Springs.
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!
O beautiful
for pilgrim feet
Whose stern
impassioned stress
A thoroughfare
of freedom beat
across the wilderness!
America!
America!
God mend thine
every flaw,
Confirm thy
soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in
law!
O beautiful
for heroes proved
In liberating
strife.
Who more than
self their country loved
And mercy more
than life!
America!
America!
May God thy
gold refine
Till all
success be nobleness
And every gain
divine!
O beautiful
for patriot dream
That sees
beyond the years
Thine
alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by
human tears!
America!
America!
God shed his
grace on thee
And crown thy
good with brotherhood
From sea to
shining sea!
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