My Country, 'Tis of Thee

Sheet music version

"My Country, 'Tis of Thee", also known as "America", is an American patriotic song, whose lyrics were written by Samuel Francis Smith. The melody is that of the British national anthem, God Save the King or Queen, although Smith encountered it by way of a German adaptation. The song served as a de facto national anthem of the United States before the adoption of "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the official anthem.

History

Samuel Francis Smith wrote the lyrics to "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" in 1831, while a student at the Andover Theological Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts. His friend Lowell Mason had asked him to translate the lyrics in some German school songbooks or to write new lyrics. A melody in Muzio Clementi's Symphony No. 3 caught his attention. Rather than translating the lyrics from German, Smith wrote his own American patriotic hymn to the melody completing the lyrics in thirty minutes.

Smith gave Mason the lyrics he had written and the song was first performed in public on July 4, 1831, at a children's Independence Day celebration at Park Street Church in Boston. First publication of 'America" was in 1832.

Lyrics

1

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing;

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the pilgrims' pride,

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring!

2

My native country, thee,

Land of the noble free,

Thy name I love;

I love thy rocks and rills,

Thy woods and templed hills;

My heart with rapture thrills,

Like that above.

3

Let music swell the breeze,

And ring from all the trees

Sweet freedom's song;

Let mortal tongues awake;

Let all that breathe partake;

Let rocks their silence break,

The sound prolong.

4

Our fathers' God to Thee,

Author of liberty,

To Thee we sing.

Long may our land be bright,

With freedom's holy light,

Protect us by Thy might,

Great God our King.

5 (added to celebrate Washington's Centennial)

Our joyful hearts today,

Their grateful tribute pay,

Happy and free,

After our toils and fears,

After our blood and tears,

Strong with our hundred years,

O God, to Thee.

Additional verses by Henry van Dyke

6

We love thine inland seas,

Thy groves and giant trees,

Thy rolling plains;

Thy rivers' mighty sweep,

Thy mystic canyons deep,

Thy mountains wild and steep,--

All thy domains.

7

Thy silver Eastern strands,

Thy Golden Gate that stands

Fronting the West;

Thy flowery Southland fair,

Thy North's sweet, crystal air:

O Land beyond compare,

We love thee best!

Notable performances

• Marian Anderson performed the song at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939.
• Crosby, Stills & Nash performed the song on the first episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to air after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
• On January 20, 2009 Aretha Franklin sang the song at the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Cultural references

• The American composer Charles Ives wrote Variations on America for organ when he was eighteen. It is a light-hearted set of variations on the main theme, including a polonaise, a scherzo and even a tarantella. Orchestrated by William Schuman, it remains a popular orchestral showpiece.
• Martin Luther King Jr. quoted this song during his "I Have A Dream" speech.
• Ani DiFranco referred to this song ironically in her song "Tis Of Thee", which includes the line, "My country 'tis of thee, to take shots at each other on prime time TV."
• George Orwell also wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four that Oceania's national anthem was titled "Oceania, 'Tis for Thee", a name which appears to be derived from "My Country, 'Tis of Thee".
• A song supporting women's suffrage, "The New America," is a spin-off of this song. It reflects a common suffrage argument--that giving women the vote simply fulfilled the promise of 1776.
• George and Ira Gershwin wrote the 1931 political satire musical Of Thee I Sing, but the "thee" in this case was not the USA but rather the President's romantic interest.
• In the South Park episode World Wide Recorder Concert, four million third-graders from around the country are organized by Kenny G and Yoko Ono to play the song on recorders. However, the song is ruined by the bizarre effect of the brown note.
• On The Simpsons, in the episode “Moaning Lisa”, Lisa begins to play bebop during a band practice of this song, and in “Bart Vs. Australia”, Homer proudly sings it to a toilet in Australia engineered to overcome the Coriolis Effect.
• Singer Neil Diamond quoted this song in his song “America”.
• The first verse of this song can be found on Michael Hedges' song Holiday.
• LeRoy Jones (Amiri Baraka) refers to this song in his play The Slave (p. 74)
• In The West Wing episode 5.14 (entitled An Khe) features the version of this song played by Crosby, Stills & Nash.
• A parody of the song is featured on the Ren & Stimpy episode The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen.
• The theme is whistled by the Sharks gang in the candy store (just after the War Council) in the musical West Side Story.
• In a performance at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 3, 2006, Peter, Paul and Mary sang the first three lines of this song as a final verse to "Don't Laugh at Me".
• W.E.B. Du Bois wrote a poem entitled "My Country 'Tis of Thee" in which he revises the poem to better suit his own opinion about the country.
• C.M. Burns (on The Simpsons) sang the song with altered lyrics, referring to Austria-Hungary, and was corrected by his assistant, Smithers, in the episode The Burns and the Bees.
• The song is sung by newly freed slave children in the 1989 film Glory, which is set during the American Civil War.
• In Merde Happens by Stephen Clarke, the British main character sings "God Save the Queen", while American tourists join in with "My Country 'Tis of Thee."

Bibliography

• Music, David M., and Paul A. Richardson. I Will Sing the Wondrous Story: A History of Baptist Hymnody in North America. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2008.

External links

• Page about the song at the Library of Congress, with scans, etc.
• Public Domain version of the sheet music in multiple formats for viewing, printing, editing, etc. - (from the Choral Public Domain Library)
• Review of a book about the song from the Journal of American History
• CyberHymnal - contains history, lyrics, and infinitely-looping MIDI music.