Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam;

Its full glory reflected now shines on the stream:

’Tis 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 the band who so vauntingly swore,

Mid the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,

A home and a country they’d leave us no more?

Their blood hath 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,