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There also was a notable prequel to this story. 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.