America the Beautiful

While Bates wrote “America the Beautiful” in 1893, the song underwent significant changes over the course of the next 18 years, and the version most people know today wouldn’t arrive complete with music until 1911.

While the 1893 version contained most of the finished song, the line “from sea to shining sea” was absent. Also notable, the first verse refers to the sky as halcyon instead of spacious, suggesting a more metaphorical approach to the landscape than the concrete one in the final song. She also originally called the song “America: A Poem for July 4.”

A 1904 update looks closer to the final song than the 1893 version. The main difference here is the verse commemorating those who have sacrificed their lives for the country. Here, Bates writes, “O beautiful for glory-tale / Of liberating strife, / When valiantly for man’s avail / Men lavished precious life.” Notice here the repetition in the last two lines of “valiantly for man’s avail / Men lavished [...] life.” The repetition of man/men and the “L” sounds makes for a complex parallelism in the two lines, but the line is more universal than the final verse that specifies the sacrifice for country instead of for life itself.