Katharine Lee Bates
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Katharine Lee Bates, (August 12, 1859 - March 26, 1929), is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful.
Bates was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts. The daughter of a Congregational pastor, she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley. She lived there with her partner Katharine Coman, who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department. The same-sex pair lived together for twenty-five years until Coman's death in 1915.
The first draft of America the Beautiful was hastily jotted in a notebook during the summer of 1893, which Miss Bates spent teaching English at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Later she remembered,
"One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse."
The words to her one famous poem first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, for Independence Day, 1895. The poem reached a wider audience when her revised version was printed in the Boston Evening Transcript, November 19, 1904. Her final expanded version was written in 1913.
The hymn has been sung to other music, but the familiar tune that Ray Charles delivered is by Samuel A. Ward (1847-1903), written for his hymn Materna (1882).
Miss Bates was a prolific author of many volumes of poetry, travel books and children's books. Her family home on Falmouth's Main Street is preserved by the Falmouth Historical Society.
Katharine Lee Bates died in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1929.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Lee_Bates
Oh beautiful, 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.
Oh beautiful, for pilgrims' feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!
Oh beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
'Til all success be nobleness, and ev'ry gain divine!
Oh beautiful, for patriot's dream
That sees beyond 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!
Takeoffs
A song as popular and familiar as "America the Beautiful" inevitably gets used out of its proper context or time frame, for humorous effect. As the song seems to have "always been there", it is often presented as if Christopher Columbus had written it when he arrived at the New World (though in fact, Columbus never set foot on North America; all his voyages were to the Caribbean islands, South and Central America). Some examples:
* A Far Side cartoon from 1982 (reprinted in Sherr's book) shows Columbus nearing land, with his crew of conquistador types, and saying, "Look, gentlemen! Purple mountains! Spacious skies! Fruited plains! ... Is someone writing this down?"
* In one of his comedy club routines in the early 1960s, Flip Wilson did a Columbus story with an African-American twist... ironically, the catchphrase repeated by Queen Isabel (an early "Geraldine") is "Chris gon' find Ray Charles!" When his Columbus sees land, he comments, "It's America, all right... just look at those spacious skies... those amber waves of grain... dig that purple mountain's majesty... I'll bet there's fruit out there on the plain!"
* In his satirical, musical record album, The United States of America, Volume 1, Stan Freberg plays Columbus, Jesse White plays a skeptical King Ferdinand, and Colleen Collins does Queen Isabella (mimicking Tallulah Bankhead), resulting in this bit of dialogue: [1]
Ferdinand: Look at him in that hat! Is that a crazy sailor?
Isabella: Crazy? I'll tell you how crazy! He's a man with a dream, a vision, a vision of a new world, whose alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears, with purple mountain majesties above the Two Cents Plain . . .
Ferdinand and Columbus: Fruited!
Isabella: Fruited.
George Carlin performed a satirical version around 1970, when environmental issues were becoming a hot political topic: [2]
Oh beautiful, for smoggy skies, insecticided grain
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea!
She probably thinks that I'm the mad woman of Shallot. It's my updates, I think.and I really need to see Yahoo about some problems. 
