Chosen by Dr Oliver Tearle
Previously, we’ve offered some of the best very short poems by American poets, and in this post we turn our thoughts to poems about America, which we feel are especially appropriate for the Fourth of July. Here are some of the most fervently patriotic poems about the United States for Independence Day.
Francis Scott Key, ‘The Star Spangled Banner’.
O 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 perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ 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?