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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  America

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

America

By Samuel Francis Smith (1808–1895)

[Born in Boston, Mass., 1808. Died, 1895. Composed in 1832, and first sung in public at the Park Street Church, Boston, on July Fourth of that year.]

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 mountain-side

Let freedom ring.

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.

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.

Our fathers’ God, to thee,

Author of liberty,

To thee I sing;

Long may our land be bright

With freedom’s holy light;

Protect us by thy might,

Great God our King.