Posted on 07/04/2017 1:04:50 AM PDT by Oshkalaboomboom
Katharine Lee Bates, a 33-year-old English literature teacher at Wellesley College, was on “a merry expedition up Pike’s Peak” in Colorado in 1893 when she looked out “over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies.”
In an instant, she said, “the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind.” Those lines became “America the Beautiful” — a song that will feature today in countless parades and band concerts.
Everyone knows the first verse, with its evocation of “amber waves of grain” and “purple mountain majesties.” But how many have read — let alone sung — the entire song?
The full hymn is more than just a poetic appreciation of the country’s wonders of nature. It evokes the vitality of an ever-widening America, celebrates its storied past and — most important — evokes its limitless future potential.
It hails the pioneering forebears who beat “a thoroughfare of freedom . . . across the wilderness,” and pays tribute to the nation’s defenders in war, the brave “heroes . . . who more than self their country loved.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
“Does anybody think a song like this could come out of the mind of a modern day Wellesley professor? “
About the same chances as those of the monkeys with typewriters coming up with War and Peace.
I IMMEDIATELY heard in my mind, "For purple mountains' majesty" because the color of that mountain range is indeed, purple from a distance and though I was a passenger and keeping up with conversation of the kind folks that had picked me up in Missouri and were going all the way to Long Beach, Calif (I believe NOW, that even then, way before I even MET the Lord, He was guiding my way).. I was amazed at at that scene ....
We travelled a couple of hundred miles that first day and the Rockies never seemed to get closer and they never changed color.
What a beautiful, inspiring, reminiscence. Thanks for bringing us back with you on your glorious road trip past the Rockies. Your being a passenger allowed an uninterrupted view. The phrase “Purple Mountains’ Majesty” is indeed sublime. God has indeed blessed America. May we deserve his continued blessing.
What a beautiful, inspiring, reminiscence. Thanks for bringing us back with you on your glorious road trip past the Rockies. Your being a passenger allowed an uninterrupted view. The phrase “Purple Mountains’ Majesty” is indeed sublime. God has indeed blessed America. May we deserve his continued blessing.
In my elder years now, I am amazed still at the stuff I was never taught and I discovered on my own.
THIS, for instance just crossed my FB page a few hours agao;
George Walton (Georgia), John Penn (North Carolina), and Samuel Chase (Maryland) were 35.
Arthur Middleton (South Carolina), James Wilson (Pennsylvania), and William Hooper (North Carolina) were 34.
Thomas Jefferson (Virginia) and Thomas Stone (Maryland) were 33.
Elbridge Gerry (Massachusetts) was 32.
Benjamin Rush (Pennsylvania) was 31.
Thomas Heyward Jr. (South Carolina) was 30.
Thomas Lynch Jr. (South Carolina) was 27.
And Edward Rutledge (South Carolina) was a mere 26 years old!
Perhaps even more remarkable than the young ages of these signers is the young age at which many of them began what we today consider “adult life.” A number of signers entered prestigious colleges such as Harvard between the ages of 13 and 16, including John Hancock, Samuel Adams, William Ellery, Robert Treat Pain, and Elbridge Gerry. Still others, such as George Ross, John Penn, Benjamin Rush, and William Whipple, were already beginning their careers as businessmen, lawyers, and doctors by the time many modern young people are just finishing their undergrad years.
While I was skying off into hippiedom, sex, drugs and rock and roll .... look at what young me MY AGE AT THE TIME were doing with their lives !
THIS is the war America must wage now.
There are decent people then there are lowlife scumbag vile Democrats....
Not to put too fine a point on it, but; IMHO, there is a glaring omission in your article, in that, in naming the various things enumerated in the hymn, you did not mention our Creator God, Whose overarching love and generosity and watchcare made it all possible, and to Whom Ms. Bates freely gave such praise in her hymn.
Wellesley would fire here now but not before the lunatic population there drove her insane.
The curious line about “alabaster cities” was apparently inspired by a model of a city at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 that was made out of a type of papier-mâché that resembled alabaster.
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