Buried in Time

I happened to find this video on YouTube while setting up an account...



I did not know what to think, because I had never heard these lyrics before, and while they and this guy's rendition were pretty stirring, I am wary of plants in Tea Party crowds.

Knowing how the left thinks, and knowing it has no scruples, I worried that the guy had made them up, and worried that things like him holding up his hand like many singers or a preacher might do, would be taken by the left as a cryptic neo-fascist sign.

God bless Al Gore and the inter-tubes, I Googled it, and damn if I did not find this:

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?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
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, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in 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.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n 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!

I had no $%#* idea that there were other lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. How is that possible? Now, I get that the version sung at most events would be shorter, but did I learn this in school and forget it, or did they not bother to teach it?

I would love to find a version of this entire thing sung with fervor. Some of the lines fill you with a pleasant chill:

"On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,"

Has a Tolkienian quality to it.

This reminds me of Victor Davis Hanson's book Carnage And Culture:

"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."

What strikes me about all this is the feeling that as Americans we are re-awakening to our history and our legacy, one that has been buried slowly over time. Some of it was merely covered over with the silt of years, others of it purposefully covered over to hide it.

Let's all grab a shovel and dig it out.