“LET US ALL SING THE LAST VERSE”

SO MANY COMPLAINTS have been raised against the “Star-Spangled Banner” as a national anthem that a new suggestion for its use is always welcome. A writer to the New York Herald points out that the last verse of the hymn, rather than the first, expresses American feeling and is the one that ought to be sung. Few who are able to repeat any words of the national hymn get beyond the first verse, which merely pictures a scene and does not touch our emotion until the refrain is reached. The last verse, as the writer Helen Elmira Waite, points out, is “filled with the purest of joy and thanks-giving to Him who ‘made and preserved us a nation.”

Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand

Between their lov’d home and wild war’s desolation;

Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-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,

0 ‘er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

“What are the men gathered at Washington to-day doing if not standing ‘between their loved homes and wild war’s desolation’? And is it only on battlefields that we can conquer? Are we to forget to give praise to that Power which made and preserved us a nation and gave peace and victory to that nation? And what of our motto? Is that to go into the discard?”

Source: Literary Digest for December 3, 1921

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 1:29 am and is filed under 1920's, Music, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.

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