Death of Bates

Katharine Lee Bates was 69 years old when she died at her home in Wellesley, Massachusetts on March 28, 1929. By then, she was well-known as well as a respected scholar and professor at Wellesley College and the editor of several anthologies of other writers and poets, including some collections of children's stories. Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, she was also widely recognized as the author of the song "America the Beautiful." She wrote many other poems of equal merit, however, including several which called for social justice throughout the world. This one is "When the Millennium Comes":

When the Millennium comes
Only the kings will fight,
While the princes beat the drums,
And the queens in aprons white,
Arnica bottle in hand,
Watch their Majesties throw,
With a gesture vague and grand,
Their crowns at the dodging foe,
Poor old obsolete crowns
That Time hangs up in a row.

When the Millennium comes
And the proud steel navies meet,
While the furious boiler hums,
And the vengeful pistons beat,
The sailors will stay on shore
And cheer with a polyglot shout
The self-fed cannon that roar
Till metal has fought it out,
But the warm, glad bodies of boys
Are not for the waves to flout.

When the Millennium comes,
Love, the mother of life,
Will have worked out all the sums
Of our dim industrial strife,
And every man shall be lord
Of his deed and his dream, and the lore
Of war shall be abhorred
As a dragon-tale of yore,
Myth of the Iron Age,
A monster earth breeds no more.

Bates: From sea to shining sea!

Though she wrote several collections of poetry, travel essays, and children's books, Katharine Lee Bates is today remembered only for one work. Born on August 12, 1859 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Bates lost her father when she was only a month old. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and later returned there to teach English for four decades.

She spent a semester in Colorado (where she met Woodrow Wilson) and, with other visiting faculty members at Colorado College, took a wagon ride across the prairies. She was so moved, she wrote the poem which cemented her in literary history: "America the Beautiful" was published on Independence Day in 1895; it was almost immediately set to music.

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 every 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 every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
  That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
  Undimmed by human tears!
    America! America!
  God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
  From sea to shining sea!

Bates lived with fellow Wellesley faculty member Katharine Coman for 25 years. Historians still debate if the relationship was purely platonic, living in a "Boston marriage," or if they were a romantic couple. Bates is memorialized with a statue in Colorado and in her birthplace of Falmouth. There was some discussion that "America the Beautiful" should become the national anthem; of course, the anthem remains that poem by Francis Scott Key.