Perhaps the most evocative tune in America's patriotic repertoire, and certainly the most popular, is also among the least understood. Written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1893, "America the Beautiful" will be sung at countless parades and picnics and parties on the country's 250th anniversary July 4. Amid divisive times in national life, it offers a hopeful and fitting rejoinder.

Bates composed the song after a trip up Pikes Peak in Colorado, moved by the natural splendor she saw--in "one ecstatic........

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