  1780=1843. Francis Scott Key was born in Frederick county, Maryland, and was educated at St. John’s College, Annapolis. He became a lawyer, was appointed District Attorney of the District of Columbia, and spent his life in Washington City. A very handsome monument has been erected to his memory in San Francisco by Mr. James Lick: his song, the “Star-Spangled Banner,” will be his enduring monument throughout our country. It was composed during the attack on Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, 1814. Key had gone to the British vessel to get a friend released from imprisonment, in which he succeeded, but he was kept on board the enemy’s vessel until after the attack on the fort; and the song commemorates his evening and morning watch for the star-spangled banner on Fort McHenry, and the appearance of the flag in “the morning’s first beam” showed that the attack had been successfully resisted. The words were written on an old envelope. (See illustrations in the Century Magazine, July, 1894.) WORKS.Poems, with a sketch by Chief-Justice Taney. Star-Spangled Banner. Obverse Reverse Seal of the United States. THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.Oh! say can you see by the dawn’s early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the clouds of the fight O’er the ramparts we watched, 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? 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, now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, In 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 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 washed 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. Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-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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