20 pages • 40 minutes read
Katharine Lee BatesAmerica the Beautiful
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1893A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Repetition
Bates utilizes a repetitive structure to give the song rhythm and to reinforce the themes of the song. Each verse alternates with either “O beautiful for” or “America! America!” This sets up the two distinct verse structures throughout the song. The non-choral verses name one aspect of the country to glorify, and the choral verses call upon God’s grace.
This simple repetitive structure is common for songs. The repetitive structures make the song easy to follow and remember, and they set up an organized structure for the song to give it a pattern.
Bates also uses repetitive sounds to create alliterative lines. In the first verse, she alliterates “spacious skies” and “mountain majesties” (Lines 1, 3). In the first choral verse, she introduces the alliterative “America! America!” (Line 5) that repeats the “a” sound four times in eight syllables, and she also alliterates “sea to shining sea” (Line 8) to repeat the “s” sound three times in five syllables. This sort of alliteration overload amplifies the song’s musical qualities, helping the lines roll off the tongue when sung.
The third verse repeats this technique with the line “Whose stern impassion’d stress” (Line 10). This line repeats the “s” sound five times in six syllables. Combined with the iambic rhythm of the line, the musical quality of the verse jumps off the page.
Contractions, Diction, and Syntax
As a gospel song, Bates uses a somewhat archaic, “old-timey” syntax and diction throughout the song. Even for a song written in the late 19th century, the word order and vocabulary are out of place, especially for a song written by a college educated New Englander. Bates is utilizing an aspect of biblical style to give the song an added spiritual weight. This is most evident in the use of the archaic pronouns “thee” and “thy.” Not only does this type of diction locate the poem within the Christian tradition, but it also locates it in the Enlightenment tradition; specifically, it connects with the writings of the Founding Fathers.
Additionally, Bates uses the old poetic technique of contractions to save the rhythm and syllable count in four different lines. She contracts “every” to “ev’ry” twice, she contracts “impassioned” to “impassion’d,” and she contracts “proved” to “prov’d.” While “impassioned” and “proved” don’t necessarily need the contractions to omit a syllable, Bates contracts “every” to ensure readers don’t read the word as ev-er-y, which is more of a British pronunciation. She wants readers to read it as “ev-ry,” which is more of an American pronunciation.
In the end, the use of contractions serves two purposes: it gives the song more of an archaic, biblical feel, and it ensures proper pronunciation to fit the rhythm of the lines.
Regarding syntax, some of the lines are written in ornate forms to better match biblical style. A line like, “Who more than self their country loved” (Line 19) would normally be written, “Who loved their country more than themselves.” A line like, “May God thy gold refine” (Line 22) would normally be written, “May God refine your gold.” The inversions of the verbs and pronouns in these lines give them an archaic, sentimental feel, amplifying the grandeur and emotion of the song. This also applies to the repetition of “O beautiful for” at the beginning of each non-choral verse. This type of line sets the poem in the same tradition as the great Romantic odes by writers like John Keats and Percy Shelley. Bates is writing in this style to give the song gravitas.
Form and Meter
Bates wrote “America the Beautiful” in ballad verse, meaning the lines alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. This means each verse is a quatrain, or has four lines, and the rhyme scheme is ABCB (although the non-choral verses use an ABAB rhyme scheme). Lines one and three have eight syllables, or four metrical feet (a metrical foot is a set of two syllables, one stressed and the other stressed), and lines two and four have six syllables, or three metrical feet. Each line follows an iambic pattern, which is an unstressed/stressed pattern. Below is a scansion of the second verse. Each verse follows this exact format:
Amer | ica! | Amer | ica!
God shed | His grace | on thee,
And crown | thy good | with broth | erhood
From sea | to shin | ing sea!
Ballad verse, along with iambic pentameter, is one of the most widely used metrical patterns in English poetry. It is particularly effective for its brevity and for its singsong rhythm, which comes through both because of the iambs and because of the alternating four-foot/three-foot constructions.
