The Star-Spangled Banner
by Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)
Did you know that Key wrote more than one stanza?

O 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 watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bomb 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?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
⁠Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that, which the breeze, o er the towering steep
⁠As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream;
’T is the star-spangled banner; O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
⁠That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
⁠Their blood has wash d out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever! when freemen shall stand
⁠Between their lov’d homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
⁠Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation,
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto—In God is our trust,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

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