Patriotic poet Katharine Lee Bates was born and raised on Cape Cod, a slender wisp of seaside sand the place the one elevation comes from dunes that shift with wind and tide.  

Later a professor at Wellesley Faculty in Massachusetts, Bates traveled 2,000 miles throughout the huge continent to show in Colorado in the summertime of 1893.

She was shocked by the everlasting solidity of the Rocky Mountains and impressed virtually immediately to report the unbelievable expertise of seeing the US from new heights. 

Bates wrote “America the Stunning.”

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The phrases flowed frantically after she reached the summit of Pike’s Peak, 14,000 toes above sea stage, and peered down in “rapture” and “ecstatic gaze,” she later wrote, on the beautiful spectacle. 

“O lovely for spacious skies/For amber waves of grain/For purple mountain majesties/Above the fruited plain!” learn the opening strains of her American panegyric. 

Katharine Lee Bates, a poet and professor at Wellesley Faculty, is greatest generally known as the creator of “America the Stunning,” which she wrote after a visit to the summer season of Pike’s Peak in 1893. She was born on Aug. 12, 1859, in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and died on March 28, 1929, in Wellesley, Massachusetts. (Public Area)

Her phrases in the present day are deeply embedded within the soul of a nation.  

“It was then and there, as I used to be looking over the sea-like expanse of the fertile nation spreading away to date below these ample skies, that the opening strains of the hymn floated into my thoughts,” Bates advised the Boston Night Transcript in 1904. 

“Looking over the sea-like expanse of the fertile nation spreading away to date below these ample skies … the opening strains of the hymn floated into my thoughts.”

“After we left Colorado Springs the 4 stanzas have been penciled in my pocket book, along with different memoranda, in verse and prose, of the journey.”

Initially titled “Pike’s Peak,” her poem was revealed on July 4, 1895, in “The Congregationalist,” a Boston-based Christian journal. The facility of its message rapidly unfold. Quite a few efforts adopted to place the phrases to music. 

Sheet music cowl picture of the tune “America the Stunning: ‘God Shed His Grace on Thee,’” with unique authorship notes studying, “Phrases by Katharine Lee Bates, Wellesley, Mass; Music by Parke W Hewins, Wellesley Hills, Mass.,” 1917. The primary line reads, “O lovely for spacious skies/For amber waves of grain,” and the illustration artist is listed as “None.”  (Sheridan Libraries/Levy/Gado/Getty Photos)

Her poem was paired with a tune in 1910 by church composer Samuel Augustus Wardby of Newark, New Jersey, creating the hovering model of the nationwide religious recognized in the present day.

“America the Stunning” might greatest be remembered for its impassioned description of the bodily great thing about the panorama. 

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However it’s truly a religious name to unity. A prayer. 

Bates herself known as it a hymn. 

She wrote it within the aftermath of carnage in an period when progressive lecturers celebrated foundational principals of religion reasonably than railed towards them. 

John Legend sings “America The Stunning” earlier than the beginning of Tremendous Bowl XLIX between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks on Feb. 1, 2015, on the College of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.  (Give attention to Sport/Getty Photos)

“She was a baby of the Civil Warfare. She knew the hazard of seeing a rustic so polarized,” Bates biographer Nancy Churnin, creator of the e book for younger readers, “For Spacious Skies,” advised Fox Information Digital.

“Her dream was to jot down a poem to remind us that we’re one American household from sea to shining sea.”

‘Rock’d in a clamshell’

Katharine Lee Bates was born within the coastal group of Falmouth, Massachusetts, on August 12, 1859. 

“Rock’d in a clamshell,” she as soon as famous of her infancy. 

The childhood residence of Katherine Lee Bates, creator of “America the Stunning,” in Falmouth, Massachusetts. (Elisa Rolle, licensed below Inventive Commons)

Father William Bates was the minister of the Congregational church within the heart of city. Mom Cornelia Frances (Lee) Bates boasted a distinguished schooling for a girl of the period. Each mother and father got here from longtime New England households.

William Bates, affected by a tumor in his backbone, died simply weeks after she was born. 

“You need to compose your self and be calm. You need to belief within the Lord and be reconciled to his will. He’ll present for you.”

As his final official act, Rev. Bates baptized his daughter. 

“You need to compose your self and be calm,” the minister reportedly mentioned to his spouse whereas on his deathbed. “You need to belief within the Lord and be reconciled to his will. He’ll present for you.”

A U.S. Coast Guard vessel makes its manner in entrance of the Nobska Level Gentle in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The seaside group on Cape Cod is the birthplace of Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote “America the Stunning.” The city boasts many tributes to the well-known daughter of Falmouth.  (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe through Getty Photos)

His loss of life left Katharine’s “good mom and literary aunt, each Mount Holyoke Seminary graduates, to boost 4 younger kids,” wrote Bates biographer Melinda Ponder, in a speech delivered at Wellesley Faculty in 2016.

“This sea-faring village with many impoverished widows and youngsters, the place it was ‘share and share alike,’ as her mom mentioned, confirmed Katharine what a real group was like,” Ponder additionally wrote.

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The tragedy of the Civil Warfare lingered over Bates’ life. The little fishing city of Falmouth, then numbering simply 2,500 residents, misplaced 19 males within the struggle. 

She was simply 5 years outdated when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. But she remembered the grief the remainder of her life — her mom’s tears and her widow’s black scarf hung in mourning at their church. 

An engraving depicts John Wilkes Sales space escaping after taking pictures President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. (iStock)

“The nation’s sorrow, I felt my sorrow,” Bates wrote years later of the childhood reminiscence. 

But Bates prospered as a baby. She learn voraciously, with Louisa Might Alcott, Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens amongst her favourite writers. 

“Bates entered the second class of scholars at new Wellesley Faculty in 1876, the place she was generally known as ‘Katie of ’80′ and served as class president and poet.”

She entered the second class of scholars at new Wellesley Faculty in 1876, the place she was generally known as “Katie of ’80.” She served as class president and poet. 

The varsity was based, amongst different functions, to create a brand new era of academics to assist change the 1000’s of male academics killed and crippled through the Civil Warfare. 

The duvet of certainly one of Bates’ earlier poems, “Goody Santa Claus,” revealed in 1889. The poem tells the story of Christmas from the perspective of Santa’s spouse, Goodwife “Goody” Claus. The story helped propel the idea of Mrs. Claus in well-liked tradition.  (Public Area)

Bates gained the eye of faculty founder Henry Durant. 

“He did all he might to encourage and assist Katharine get began on her literary profession,” wrote Ponder, the creator of “Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea.”

By Durant, Bates met or labored with literary icons Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Dean Howells.

Years later, as a distinguished Wellesley Faculty educator, she mentored a future titan of American letters: younger poet Robert Frost. 

Katharine Lee Bates, proper, and her associate Katharine Coman, left, a fellow Wellesley professor. Bates is the creator of “America the Stunning.” Coman was additionally a distinguished author and scholar and, by one account, the primary feminine statistics professor in the US. (Public Area)

She loved an extended relationship with fellow Wellesley Faculty professor Katharine Coman — a pioneering feminine educational in economics and statistics. 

The 2 lived collectively for years in an association referred to throughout that period as a “Boston marriage.”

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Bates traveled throughout the nation to show in Colorado Springs in the summertime of 1893. 

The journey took her by way of Niagara Falls, throughout huge fruiting fields of a booming agricultural nation and to the quickly rising metropolis of Chicago, the place she attended the World’s Truthful. 

View wanting south throughout the west finish of the Nice Basin on the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition or Chicago World’s Truthful, 1893. Katharine Lee Bates, creator of “America the Stunning,” visited the honest and its White Metropolis. It impressed her picture of “alabaster cities” referenced within the patriotic anthem.  (Chicago Historical past Museum/Getty Photos)

Among the many most notable displays was its White Metropolis. 

Bates was reminded of the honest’s gleaming alabaster metropolis later that summer season as she stood atop Pike’s Peak and penned her magnificent poem. 

‘Who greater than self their nation beloved’

The memorable great thing about the nationwide panorama captured in “America the Stunning” is just one a part of its story. 

Bates, maybe extra powerfully, captured the religious great thing about a “new nation conceived in liberty, and devoted to the proposition that each one males are created equal,” as President Lincoln mentioned so powerfully beside the battle lifeless of Gettysburg when the longer term poet was simply 4 years outdated.

America suffered human failings — together with the horrific carnage of disunity that raged in Bates’ childhood and formed her future. 

Katharine Lee Bates would usually write out the lyrics to “America the Stunning” for mates, household and followers. This handwritten copy of the lyrics is signed by Bates (date unknown). (Heritage Auctions)

But she nonetheless believed — as Lincoln did — that “God shed His grace on thee.”

She famously described the American panorama solely in her first stanza. The opposite three stanzas are tributes to the facility of religion to unite an enormous nation. 

O lovely 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 lovely for pilgrim toes/Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat/Throughout the wilderness!
America! America!/God mend thine each flaw,
Affirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in legislation!

A lady takes an image on the prime of Pike’s Peak mountain within the Entrance Vary of the Rocky Mountains inside Pike Nationwide Forest, 10 miles west of Colorado Springs, Colorado, on June 8, 2013. Cape Cod native and poet Katharine Lee Bates was impressed to jot down “America the Stunning” after she solid an “ecstatic gaze” upon the land from the highest of Pike’s Peak in 1893.  (Joe Klamar/AFP through Getty Photos)

O lovely for heroes proved/In liberating strife.
Who greater than self their nation beloved/And mercy greater than life!
America! America!/Might God thy gold refine
Until all success be nobleness/And each acquire divine!

O lovely for patriot dream/That sees past 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!

The second stanza pays homage to pilgrims — each the Pilgrims of 1620 and the immigrants who adopted — and the need of morality in a world of temptation. 

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The Mayflower Pilgrims first stepped on shore on Bates’ native Cape Cod within the autumn of 1620 earlier than settling just a few miles north in Plymouth.  

Touchdown of the Mayflower pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 1620. Illustration by Howard Pyle, 1882, in “Howard Pyle’s E book of the American Spirit.” Artist Howard Pyle. The Pilgrims first set foot in Plymouth on Dec. 16, 1620.  (Tradition Membership/Bridgeman through Getty Photos)

“Historical past information no nobler enterprise for religion and freedom than that of this Pilgrim band,” reads the tomb on the Pilgrims overlooking Plymouth Harbor in the present day. 

Bates certainly grew up impressed by their dauntless religion within the face of loss of life. 

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Musician Ray Charles sang probably the most memorable variations of “America the Stunning,” which he started with the third stanza. 

The passage pays tribute to those that so believed within the grace of God that they gave their lives for his or her homeland “in liberating strife.”

The passage echoes the phrases of one other religious patriotic anthem, written by one other Massachusetts girl, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” by Julia Ward Howe.

President Ronald Reagan leans over and thanks singer Ray Charles on Aug. 23, 1984. Charles sang “America the Stunning” on the GOP Conference in Dallas, Texas. Nancy Reagan is on the left. (Getty Photos)

“As he died to make males holy allow us to die to make males free,” Howe wrote in her extra martial, combative poem, written 30 years earlier because the Civil Warfare raged. 

Bates’ poem ends with an impassioned plea to “crown thy good with brotherhood” — a name to unity in a nation uniquely comprised of peoples from all corners of the world. 

“It truly is a prayer. She’s praying and asking for God’s assist to maintain the nation united.”

“It is not jingoistic patriotism. She acknowledged the nation had flaws,” Ponder, the biographer, advised Fox Information Digital.

“But it surely actually is a prayer. She’s praying and asking for God’s assist to maintain the nation united.”

Remembered from sea to shining sea

Katharine Lee Bates died of pneumonia on March 28, 1929, in Wellesley. 

She was 69 years outdated. 

Wellesley Faculty professor Katharine Lee Bates is proven sitting in masters regalia in entrance of a hearth with a canine, early nineteenth century.  (Heritage Auctions)

She’s buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Falmouth. Katharine Lee Bates Street is a distinguished thoroughfare within the heart of city. 

Shining Sea Bike Path permits cyclists and Cape Cod vacationers to pedal leisurely previous seagrass and views of the Atlantic to Woods Gap. 

The Falmouth port village is known internationally for the Woods Gap Oceanographic Institute and treasured regionally for its ferry service to the resort islands of Martha’s Winery and Nantucket. 

Authentic tombstone of Cornelia F. Lee, mom of Katharine Lee Bates and spouse of William Bates, together with Jane Bates, Katharine Bates’ sister, and Katharine Lee Bates herself, in Oak Grove Cemetery, Falmouth, Massachusetts. (Elisa Rolle, licensed below Inventive Commons)

Bates is honored with quite a few buildings and memorials at Wellesley Faculty, and with elementary faculties in each Wellesley and Colorado Springs. 

She was inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 1970. 

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Bates lived lengthy sufficient to see her phrases change into a globally acknowledged anthem of a grateful American nation. 

It is deeply rooted within the religious foundations of the US, as strong because the Rocky Mountains, as hopeful as its gleaming new cities, as lovely because the idyllic sea shores of her native Cape Cod, the place the Pilgrims first “a thoroughfare to freedom beat.”

Cowl of an early copy of “America the Stunning” by Katharine Lee Bates and “O Peerless Flag!” by Edward Collier, set to music by William Arms Fisher, dated 1917. (Public Area)

Bates thought of her “best tribute as a poet” an honor from abroad, in accordance with Ponder. 

It got here on Nov. 11, 1918 — Armistice Day — as American troopers in France acquired information that World Warfare I used to be over. 

“America! America!/God shed his grace on thee/And crown thy good with brotherhood/From sea to shining sea!”

“A battalion of American troopers — exhausted, wounded and eternally scarred, who had risked their lives for the nation they beloved — stood up and bought themselves into army formation,” wrote Ponder.

The boys, with “voices weak from poison gasoline and starvation,” started to sing in celebration. 

The Statue of Liberty amid Independence Day fireworks — and Katharine Lee Bates, creator of “America the Stunning.” (Getty Photos/Heritage Auctions)

“Overwhelmed with shock, grief and incredulous pleasure, they didn’t need a tune about struggle. They wished to have a good time the wonder and idealism of their beloved land.”

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As People, together with Bates, joyfully celebrated the top of the struggle again residence, these boys sang as one on France: “America! America!/God shed his grace on thee/And crown thy good with brotherhood/From sea to shining sea!”

To learn extra tales on this distinctive “Meet the American Who…” sequence from Fox Information Digital, click on right here.