Translating a World on the Edge

As a people, we are more divided than ever. This is not how our country was meant to be. As we say in the Pledge of Allegiance, we are meant to be ONE nation, under God. Generations have fought and died for our right to be free Americans, to think as we want to think, to live as we want to live–as long as we do not trample on the rights of others to think as they want to think, to live as they want to live. In the sight of God, we are–all of us–his children. So, why won’t we act as brothers and sisters?

Here, expressed in the lyrics of songwriters and through the performance of their work, are reminders of why we should act as brothers and sisters:

The second and third stanzas of America the Beautiful. The lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates, and the music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.  Who more than self their country loved

And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic“, also known as “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory” outside of the United States, is a song by American writer Julia Ward Howe, using the music from the song “John Brown’s Body”.  The song links the judgment of the wicked at the end of time (New Testament, Rev. 19) with the American Civil War.  Since that time, it has become an extremely popular and well-known American patriotic song.

Although most sources credit Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmett with the song’s composition, other people have claimed to have composed “Dixie”, even during Emmett’s lifetime. Compounding the problem of definitively establishing the song’s authorship are Emmett’s own confused accounts of its writing, and his tardiness in registering the song’s copyright. The latest challenge has come on behalf of the Snowden Family of Knox County, Ohio, who may have collaborated with Emmett to write “Dixie”.