April is Poetry Month

Oh, say, can you see

By the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hail'd
At the twilight's last gleaming?

 

Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watch'd
Were so gallantly streaming?

 

And the rocket's red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there

 

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the brave?

 

The lyrics to “Star Spangled Banner” (1814) were written as a poem by American lawyer and hostage negotiator Frances Scott Key, its music "borrowed" from the British drinking song “To Anacreon in Heaven” (1778-1780). Key’s poem is four cantos long, though only the first canto is used in the American national anthem.

 

There are four light sources in “The Star Spangled Banner”. The first two -- “dawn” and “twilight” -- are God given, as in the morning sun and the evening sun. The second two  -- “rockets” and “bombs” -- were produced in laboratories and armaments factories. 

 

There is no mention of the moon in this song, which is a shame. The moon is not a direct light source but a reflector, an intermediary. Rockets don’t illuminate so much as provide “glare,” colouring that which is near it, creating a kind of monochromatic wrap.

 

“Star Spangled Banner” is the only national anthem with bombs in it.