That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,Ī home and a country should leave us no more? O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.Īnd where is that band who so vauntingly swore ‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave In full glory reflected now shines on the stream, Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,Īs it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep, O’er the Land of the free and the home of the brave? O! say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave, Gave proof through the night that our Flag was still there O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?Īnd the Rockets’ red glare, the Bombs bursting in air,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light, Following the War of 1812 and subsequent American wars, other songs emerged to compete for popularity at public events, among them “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Text of the Star-Spangled Banner

“My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, whose melody is identical to “God Save the Queen,” the British national anthem, also served as a de facto anthem. “Hail, Columbia” served this purpose at official functions for most of the 19th century. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover.īefore 1931, other songs served as the hymns of American officialdom. President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on Ma(46 Stat.

“The Star-Spangled Banner” was recognized for official use by the U.S. Although the poem has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today. With a range of one octave and one fifth (a semitone more than an octave and a half), it is known for being difficult to sing. Set to Key’s poem and renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” it would soon become a well-known American patriotic song. “To Anacreon in Heaven” (or “The Anacreontic Song”), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. The poem was set to the tune of a popular British song written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men’s social club in London. One of two surviving copies of the 1812 broadside printing of the Defense of Fort McHenry, a poem that later became the national anthem of the United States.

Star spangled banner full song lyrics