Happy Independence Day!

My Country, 'Tis of Thee

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!

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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.

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No more shall tyrants here

With haughty steps appear,

And soldier bands;

No more shall tyrants tread

Above the patriot dead—

No more our blood be shed

By alien hands.

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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.

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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.

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A Bit of 4th of July History~
Words: Sam­u­el F. Smith, 1831. The hymn was first sung at an In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tion by the Bos­ton Sab­bath School Un­ion, Ju­ly 4, 1831, and first pub­lished in Choir, or Un­ion Col­lect­ion of Church Mu­sic, by Low­ell Ma­son (Bos­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts: 1832).


Music: Amer­i­ca, The­saur­us Mu­sic­us, 1744 These words were born be­cause Smith’s friend, Low­ell Ma­son, could not read Ger­man. Ma­son had re­ceived sev­er­al Ger­man hymn­als, and sent them to Smith, who he knew un­der­stood Ger­man. In one of them, Smith ran across the tune now used for My Count­ry ’Tis of Thee. No­ting that the Ger­man words were pa­tri­o­tic in na­ture:

I in­stant­ly felt the im­pulse to write a pa­tri­o­tic hymn of my own, adapt­ed to the tune. Pick­ing up a scrap of waste pa­per which lay near me, I wrote at once, prob­ab­ly with­in half an hour, the hymn ‘Amer­i­ca’ as it is now known ev­ery­where. The whole hymn stands to­day as it stood on the bit of waste paper.

Dr. Smith vis­it­ed the Board of Trade in Chi­ca­go [Il­li­nois] in May of 1887. While sit­ting in the gal­lery he was point­ed out to the some of the mem­bers. Soon he be­came the cen­ter of con­sid­er­a­ble no­tice. All at once the trad­ing on the floor ceased, and from the wheat-pit came the fa­mil­iar words, “My count­ry ’tis of thee.” Af­ter two stan­zas had been sung, Dr. Smith arose and bowed. A rous­ing cheer was giv­en by the men on the floor, to which Dr. Smith was now es­cort­ed by the sec­re­ta­ry of the Board. The mem­bers flocked around Dr. Smith and grasped his hand. Then they opened a pass­age through the crowd and led him to the wheat-pit, where they took off their hats and sang the rest of the hymn.

This information was used with permission: http://www.hymntime.com/.

Happy Independence Day from Ebenezer Forest Farm!!