America the Beautiful

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1893

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Summary

Poem Analysis

Background

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

America’s Legacy

Like any good patriotic song, “America the Beautiful” leans on the country’s history to establish its values and to mythologize its origin and significance. While “The Star-Spangled Banner” does this by mythologizing a single battle during the War of 1812, “America the Beautiful” uses a vague picture of the past to establish its presentation of the mythologized past. Specifically, Bates relies on the development of the country by two groups of people: explorers and veterans.

She mythologizes the journey of those who first came to the country and those who traversed the Western expanse by calling them pilgrims, which gives their journeys spiritual weight. Here, she relies on a popular dichotomy in American history: the “savage” wild and “civilized,” godly man. In “The Idea of Nature in America,” scholar Leo Marx tracks the development of this binary and argues that the distinction between wilderness and civilization is the defining experience of the first 200 years of America (Marx, Leo. “The Idea of Nature in America.” Daedalus, spring 2008, pp. 8-22.). Bates leans on this trope to amplify the divine mission of those who came before to help establish the country and its values.

She does a similar thing with her mythologizing of those who gave their lives for the country. She does not specifically identify veterans when doing this, but she implies her subject is those who have laid down their life for country. Again, she connects the sacrifice of these people to the values of the country, saying these people valued mercy over life. The imagery here is not necessarily of bravery but of love and beauty. This connects with Bates’s larger message, which is an appreciation of the beauty, love, and connectivity of America. This is distinct from many other patriotic songs that focus on the strength of a country. Bates is not trying to inspire a nationalistic ego; instead, she is trying to capture what she sees as the godly qualities of the country, connecting the natural beauty of the land to the beautiful characteristics of the country’s historical heroes.

Beauty and the Divine

Bates composed the poem in the late 19th century, and as an English literature scholar, she was deeply familiar with the literary and artistic trends of her era. While the Romantic era had ended by the time of the poem’s composition, its legacy cannot be ignored. Bates leans on Romantic notions of the sublime and its deification of nature when she establishes the tone of the poem. By repeating the ode-like intro of “O beautiful,” by tagging a number of the verses with exclamation points and by interweaving God and nature, Bates establishes nature as a living character to be admired. She is in awe of the beauty of the natural world, and in this beauty she sees the beauty of humankind.

This is most apparent in the shift that occurs after the first verse. The opening verse exclusively focuses on the natural landscape, seemingly establishing this as a poem about nature. However, the rest of the poem focuses on the nature of people and country, shifting the first verse’s purpose from content to theme. Bates wants to see America embody the beauty she identified in the first verse. She believes America can live up to its beautiful natural standards, but she does not think the country can do this alone.

Bates invokes spiritual aid by calling on God to bless the country and guide its people to prosperity and mercy. This turns the song into more of a prayer and even links it to the historical tradition of invoking the gods or the muses to inspire the poet to sing of great nationalistic deeds as Homer originally did in The Iliad. Bates even treats her subject, America, as the object of her gaze, referring to it in the second person the way a poet might do in an ode. This blending of forms makes the song multi-dimensional. It is a song, a prayer, an ode, a myth, a Romantic epic, and an object of nationalistic propaganda.

Progress

While this poem can be used for nationalistic propaganda, it is important to understand its honesty and the way it weaves criticism into its glorification of the country. Yes, the song deifies America. Yes, the song is a bombastic celebration of a country with many flaws. Yes, the song does not explicitly criticize the country or focus on its flaws.

However, the song does acknowledge the continual effort to progress into a better country, and it does not use God as a prop to justify the country’s existence and actions; instead, Bates introduces the divine into the song to ask for guidance and to show humility in the face of the grand natural world.

The first verse establishes the grandeur of America’s natural world. Before she is willing to introduce people into this world, she must first acknowledge, admire, and deify nature, humbling herself before it in awe. From there, she introduces the manmade concept of America and asks for God to grace this endeavor. She does not say God has ordained this land for America or that America is God’s country; she simply asks for God’s protection as the country strives to embody the beauty of its natural features.

Bates focuses on the country’s journey and its attempt to win God’s favor by tracking its progression. In the third verse, she identifies the road to freedom that early Americans built. In the fourth verse, she acknowledges the country’s flaws and identifies them as threats to liberty and self-control, a sly acknowledgment of the oppression faced by immigrants, people of color, the poor, and women. In fact, in the first edition of the song, Bates wrote, “Till selfish gain no longer stain, / The banner of the free!” This is a direct implication of inequality.

In the next verse, she returns to the progress made by earlier Americans, connecting their sacrifice with the value of mercy, a divine quality Bates believes the country has continued to develop over time. And finally, she invokes the patriot’s dream, which is represented by a glowing city that transcends human suffering. This vision of the future is what America strives for, as it is a combination of all the values she has laid out already.

In the world of this song, America is a journey whose goal is to embody the beauty, divinity, mercy, and love of the natural world.