Do you have a source for your interpretation? I did a search for the proper context. All I’ve found is 1. Purple mountain majesties was inspired by Pike’s peak in Colorado 2. Alabaster cities refers to architecture in Chicago during the world’s fair.
Also wiki on original words to “America the Beautiful”.
Can you draw a line from the lyrics to the civil war, revolutionary war, Gilded age, capitalism, socialism, etc.?
“…liberating strife…once or twice”
What do you think she was talking about- 1812? the Mexican-American War?
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain,
The banner of the free!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
“She said in her little autobiography that Falmouth practiced a kind of neighborly socialism,” says Melinda Ponder, author of the biography Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea . “And I think by that, she meant that it was as her mother said: ‘Share and share alike.’ Katharine grew up seeing her mother put these principles into practice.”
As an adult, Bates and her close companion of 25 years, fellow Wellesley professor and social activist Katharine Coman, got involved in the reformist settlement house movement, helping organize a settlement home for immigrant workers in Boston. Ponder says the family’s challenges gave Bates a deep empathy and lifelong interest in helping those struggling to make ends meet: "She wrote a line about ‘not wanting to feast with the few,’ " she says. “She wanted everyone to be included in whatever bounty there was.”
Bates and Coman volunteered at Denison House, a Boston settlement house that worked to improve the lives of immigrants who lived in Boston’s slums and worked in its sweatshops.
…
In another verse, reflecting her outrage at the rise of big business and corporate greed, she observed: “America! America! God shed his grace on thee. Till selfish gain no longer stain The banner of the free"
And many, many more. You have to deliberately close your eyes to ignore Katherine Bates’ history of who she was and what she believed to think otherwise.
Thank you.
And justice will be won and the battle will rage.
This big dog will bite when you rattle his cage.
Then you 'll be sorry that you messed with the US of A.
Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass it’s the American way.
Used to dream of Katerina Witt singing this to me while doing very naughty things.