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Star-Spangled Banner

June 1936
Proceedings
Vol. 62/6/400
Article
View Issue
Comments
Body

The Star-Spangled Banner

Oh! Say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad Stripes and bright, through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bomb bursting in air!

Gave proofs through the night that our Flag was still there.

Oh, say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave,

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

 

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream;

And the Star-Spangled Banner, Oh, long may it wave,

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

 

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,

A home and a country shall leave us no more?

Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution!

No refuge could save the hireling and slave,

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;

And the Star-Spangled Banner, in triumph doth wave,

O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

 

O thus be it e’er when freemen shall stand,

Between their lov'd home, and the war’s desolation;

Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land,

Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, for 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!

The original manuscript of the final text of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” in the handwriting of Francis Scott Key (see Naval Institute Proceedings, June, 1927).

Digital Proceedings content made possible by a gift from CAPT Roger Ekman, USN (Ret.)

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