My Country ‘Tis of Thee

Samuel Francis Smith

Samuel Frances Smith graduated from Andover the same year he wrote "My Country ‘Tis of Thee." He was going through a stack of German childrens' songs given to him by a friend on February 2, 1832. One song caught his eye and he read it and found that it was patriotic. He thought of his own great land and began to pen the words:

Within half an hour, he had written the song My Country ‘Tis of Thee. It has become our favorite American hymn of patriotism.

Though the text of the hymn is distinctively American, the tune is an international one. It is the official or semi-official national melody of about twenty nations, notably that of England where “God Save the King/Queen” has been sung for more than 200 years. The origin of the tune seems to go back deeply into the singing traditions of Europe. Traces of the tune have been found in Swiss music as early as the seventeenth century. It has also been found in the musical heritages of Germany, Sweden and Russia. Its first known publication was in a hymnal entitled Thesaurus Musicus in 1740. In 1841 one of the world’s master composers, Ludwig Beethoven, wrote several interesting piano variations on this tune.

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside,
Let freedom ring!

My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees,
Sweet freedom’s song;
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.

Our fathers’ God, to Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King.