Thus it was that Francis Scott Key reached the high tide of life before the defences of the Monumental City, and to Baltimore he returned when that tide was ebbing away, and in view of the old fort, under the battlements of which he had fallen to unfathomable depths of suffering and risen to immeasurable heights of triumphant joy, he crossed the bar into the higher tide beyond. On a beautiful hill Baltimore has erected a stately monument to the memory of the man who linked her name with the majestic anthem which gives fitting voice to our national hopes.
Away on the other edge of our continent, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, another noble shaft tells the world that "the Star-Spangled Banner yet waves" over all our land and knows no distinctions of North, South, East, or West.
In Olivet Cemetery, in the old historic city of Frederick, Maryland, is the grave of Francis Scott Key. Over it stands a marble column supporting a statue of Key, his poet face illumined by the art of the sculptor, his arms outstretched, his left hand bearing a scroll inscribed with the lines of "The Star-Spangled Banner," while on the pedestal sits Liberty, holding the flag for which those immortal lines were written.
Thus, perpetuated in granite, the noble patriot stands, looking over the town to which he long ago gave this message:
But if ever, forgetful of her past and present glory, she shall cease to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and become the purchased possession of a company of stock-jobbers and speculators; if her people are to become the vassals of a great moneyed corporation, and to bow down to her pensioned and privileged nobility; if the patriots who shall dare to arraign her corruptions and denounce her usurpations are to be sacrificed upon her gilded altar,—such a country may furnish venal orators and presses, but the soul of national poetry will be gone. That muse will "never bow the knee in mammon's fane." No, the patriots of such a land must hide their shame in her deepest forests, and her bards must hang their harps upon the willows. Such a people, thus corrupted and degraded,
"Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence they sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."