The birds singing gayly that come at my call:
Give me these, and the peace of mind, dearer than all.
Home! sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home.
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
Francis Scott Key, the author of the following patriotic poem, was born in Frederick County, Maryland, August 1, 1779. He was a very able and eloquent lawyer, and one of the most respectable gentlemen whose lives have ever adorned American society. He was a man of much literary cultivation and taste, and his religious poems are not without merit. He died very suddenly at Baltimore on January 11, 1843. In 1814, when the British fleet was at the mouth of the Potomac River, and intended to attack Baltimore, Mr. Key and Mr. Skinner were sent in a vessel with a flag of truce to obtain the release of some prisoners the English had taken in their expedition against Washington. They did not succeed, and were told that they would be detained till after the attack had been made on Baltimore. Accordingly, they went in their own vessel, strongly guarded, with the British fleet, and when they came within sight of Fort McHenry, a short distance below the city, they could see the American flag flying on the ramparts. As the day closed in, the bombardment of the fort commenced, and Mr. Key and Mr. Skinner remained on deck all night, watching with deep anxiety every shell that was fired. While the bombardment continued, it was sufficient proof that the fort had not surrendered. It suddenly ceased some time before day; but as they had no communication with any of the enemy’s ships, they did not know whether the fort had surrendered and their homes and friends were in danger, or the attack upon it had been abandoned. They paced the deck the rest of the night in painful suspense, watching with intense anxiety for the return of day. At length the light came, and they saw that “our flag was still there,” and soon they were informed that the attack had failed. In the fervor of the moment, Mr. Key took an old letter from his pocket, and on its back wrote the most of this celebrated song, finishing it as soon as he reached Baltimore. He showed it to his friend Judge Nicholson, who was so pleased with it that he placed it at once in the hands of the printer, and in an hour after it was all over the city, and hailed with enthusiasm, and took its place at once as a national song. Thus, this patriotic, impassioned ode became forever associated with the “Stars and Stripes.”
! SAY, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming;