What are You doing this Fourth of July?
The mountains? the beach? or even go fly
To places beyond; or stay and go see
Fireworks and parades here locally!
Golf, ballgames and picnics! Give 'em a try! — AHD
Two decades ago, we took our youngsters to Lexington, Concord, Plymouth Rock, and Walden Pond one summer. We stood at the statue of the Minuteman in awe, and could almost hear the "shot heard 'round the world."
Some say the United States of America was born that 19th of April in 1775 in those villages and highways and hedges northwest of Boston. Fifteen months later, the Second Continental Congress proclaimed independence from Britain, on July 4.
A detainee on a British warship, watching the bombardment of Ft. McHenry in Baltimore Harbor, penned the words that became our National Anthem. As you read these words, put yourself in Francis Scott Key's place on that chilly, stress-filled predawn:
"Oh, 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, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam, of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on 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 which 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 wiped out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of night and 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.
Oh! Thus be it ever, when free men shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner forever shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
One more week to show your hometown pride. "(Your town) is the best." The deadline is next Sunday. So far, Southern Pines leads the pack. Robbins! Pinehurst! Hamlet! Whispering Pines, where are you?
E-mail them to ArtLimericks@aol.com.
