[mtbopfuyn]

My cousin Francis sure could write a catchy little ditty!

[edpc]

Interred in my hometown. R.I.P.

[GOP Poet]

Go Francis . . . go Francis . . . :-)

[Soaring Feather]

Thanks for the post!

[RoadTest]

I'm writing this just to use the tag line I just lifted.

[sefarkas]

Looks right

Star Spangled Banner on the University of Oklahoma College of Law site.

[Cheburashka]

An essay by Isaac Asimov on the subject of the four verses.

Rest in peace, Isaac.

http://www.freedom.org/front/essay/12.html

[sasportas]

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, when our cause it is just,
AND THIS BE OUR MOTTO: "IN GOD IS OUR TRUST."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Note the caps, ye FReeper atheists and evolutionists masquerading as patriots. In these politically correct times, no wonder we never hear these other verses of the national anthem.

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

Thanks for posting the full text of the song...

[JohnBovenmyer]

Let us not forget his earlier verses — same poet, same music, previous war — written nine years earlier:

The Tripolitan war lives on not only in the Marine hymn, but also in other songs. In Georgetown, Maryland, a banquet honoring Stephen Decatur and the other heroes celebrated the victory with a song written by lawyer Francis Scott Key. Key took the popular drinking song, "Anacreon in Heaven," which had been used for many patriotic songs of the day, and turned it into an anthem:

When the warrior returns from the battle afar,
To the home and the country he has nobly defended,
Oh! Warm be the welcome to gladden his ear,
And loud be the joys that his perils are ended!
In the full tide of song, let his fame roll along.
To the feast-flowing board let us gratefully throng.
Where mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave.

The next verse celebrates the "band of brothers" that braved the desert and ocean to secure the rights and "fair fame" of America. The third verse continues the theme, more explicitly focused on the Tripolitan war:

In conflict resistless each toil they endured,
Till their foes shrunk dismay'd from the war's desolation:
And pale beam'd the crescent, its splendor obscur'd
By the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation.
Where each flaming star gleam'd a meteor of war,
And the turban'd heads bowed to the terrible glare.
Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave,
And form a bright wreath, for the brow of the brave.

Nine years later, Key would stand aboard a British warship as it bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore. He would rewrite this song about Tripoli, with its imagery of bombs and warfare, and the arresting image of the "star-spangled" flag, which here obscures the Muslim crescent.  Key's song of Tripoli lives on in the American national anthem.

The above came from US History Monthly, Winter 2002, which seems to currently be offline. I've not seen the text of the second earlier verse so I can't report it.

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[Gvl_M3]

Thought I would bump this to the top on our Independence Day!