By Dr. Bruce Smith ——Bio and Archives--January 15, 2024

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Alabaster, noun
A dense, translucent, white or tinted fine-grained gypsum.

Katherine Lee Bates wrote the poem in 1893, a remarkable year by any standard. She traveled from Boston to Colorado Springs, observing and marvelling all the way. Stopping at Niagara Falls, then the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, she witnessed that astonishing celebration of the potential of free people.

Called the White City by admirers, by itself it would have been inspiration enough for the idea of alabaster cities. From Chicago Bates traveled out across the prairies and through the Sea of Grass to the edge of the Rocky Mountains. Later in the summer she ascended Pike’s Peak, where it has been reported she felt the inspiration for her poem.

That same year, in Chicago, Frederick Jackson Turner presented his paper titled The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Based on the maps of the census of population of 1890, Turner believed that the unbroken frontier had just come to an end, and with it the end of the first era of American history. The frontier explained the development of the American character, egalitarianism, democracy, and the restless drive of the pioneers and settlers.

First published in 1895, here is the way Katherine Lee Bates captured and condensed the sights she saw in that memorable year.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry 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 ev'ry gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond........

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