Lyrics to My Country ‘Tis of Thee
Song lyrics to My Country ‘Tis of Thee by Samuel F. Smith, 1832. The hymn was written because a friend of Samuel Smith’s, , Lowell Mason, could not read German. Mr. Mason had received several German hymnals, and sent them to Samuel Smith, who he knew was fluent in German. In one of them, Smith ran across the tune now used for My Country ’Tis of Thee.
Noting that the German lyrics were patriotic, as Dr. Smith later wrote: “I instantly felt the impulse to write a patriotic hymn of my own, adapted to the tune. Picking up a scrap of waste paper which lay near me, I wrote at once, probably within half an hour, the hymn ‘America’ as it is now known everywhere. The whole hymn stands today as it stood on the bit of waste paper.”
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.
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