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- The Star-Spangled Banner
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- 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, thro' 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 thro' the night that our flag was still there.
- Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
- O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
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- On the shore, dimly seen thro' the mist 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, half conceals, half 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. Oh! long may it wave
- O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
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- And where is that band who 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 washed out their foul footstep's pollution.
- No refuge could save the hireling and slave
- From the terror of flight or 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.
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- Oh! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
- Between their loved home and the war's desolation,
- Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n-rescued land
- Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation.
- Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
- And this be our motto, "In God is our trust."
- And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
- O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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- -- Francis Scott Key