Faith and Freedom at the Twilight’s Last Gleaming. By Fr Gordon MacRae
Readers in the United States may recognize the second half of my title this week as a line from the Star Spangled Banner, our National Anthem:
“Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.”
It was composed during a battle in the War of 1812. Thirty-six years after the American Revolution in 1776, the War of 1812 was called by some the second war for American independence.
In 1814, two years into the war, a British warship bombarded Fort McHenry in the Port of Baltimore. The part of the text of the famous poem that became our National Anthem was composed on the spot by American lawyer and poet, Francis Scott Key.
“He was aboard a British frigate under a flag of truce to negotiate the release of a prisoner. While aboard, a fierce battle broke out between British and American warships.
As the smoke of battle cleared at dawn, Francis Scott Key was so inspired by the sight of an American flag still intact aboard a battered U.S. ship that he wrote down what he saw. His “Star Spangled Banner” appeared in a Baltimore newspaper.
Then its first stanza was set to music to the tune of a popular pub drinking song, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” It became the National Anthem of the United States by an act of Congress on March 3, 1931.
Few people seem to know that the famous poem that inspired the U.S. National Anthem had four stanzas.
Only the first was set to music. Nonetheless, at age eight I was one of four fourth grade students required by our teacher, Miss McNeil, to each memorize a stanza for an Independence Day school assembly.
I was fortunate enough to draw the first stanza which was the most familiar and easiest to memorize. I remember imagining at the time that Miss McNeil might actually have been present when Francis Scott Key composed the text in 1814:
“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 stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof 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 reposed,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully’ blows, half concealed, half disclosed?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
’Tis 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 should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed 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!
“Oh! Thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their beloved home and war’s desolation!
Blest with victory 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
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
— Francis Scott Key, 1814