for the linguists out there:
what does the word “for” mean in this poem?
A whole list of things which are not just beautiful, they are beautiful “for” something.
For spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for pilgrim feet, for patriot dream, for heroes proven**
Has the word “for” changed meanings over the past century?
Other than this example, are there any well known usages of saying “beautiful for” ?
(*yes, I googled it, and learned there is more than one stanza … )
Oh [America is] beautiful for [its] spacious skies.
The “for” is, I think, a conjunction which means something like “from, because of,” indicating that the source of the beauty lies in skies and grain. Alternatively, you could parse it as Oh [America is] beautiful [, known] for spacious skies.
I’m thinking the stanza is one long sentence, i.e. “For [x, y and z] God shed his grace on thee.” As in: “For its superior low-end torque, God gives thumbs up to the Ford F-150 pickup.” Although that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because that sounds like it’s saying God shed his grace on America because of those things, and if you believe in God you would presumably believe that God created those things. So I’m not sure about that part.
Dissecting Katharine Bates’s poem (which was only later set to “Materna,” the tune for the justifiably defunct hymn by Bernard of Clairvaux “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem”), the compressed imagery could be expanded to
As compressed into poetry, it’s a trifle awkward in phrasing in spots. But hopefully that halfbaked expansion clarifies the point.
It also says something, both in content and by its origin, that no other “patriotic” song does. And that makes me, at least, love it the more.
Hey, I had a hard time handling it when Bob Seger sold a song that was all about integrity for a truck commercial. Don’t tell me God’s sold out too! :eek:
I agree with Drake. I read it as being “(America is) beautiful, for a number of reasons, such as spacious skies, amber waves, purple mountains’ majesty, pilgrims’ feet, patriot dreams, etc.”
That’s an odd rhetorical form, not an indicative sentence. It’s what’s called hortatory mode. When one gives the classic response to a sneeze, “God bless you,” it’s addressed to the person sneezing, but conveying a wish that God do something, i.e., bless that person. (He, being putatively omniscient, presumably hears it anyway.)
In this case, it’s an apostrophe addressed to a personified America, whose beauty and heritage is lyrically described in the first half of each verse. And the second half is a hortatory statement which the first half modifies: “God shed His grace on thee [America]” Not “God has shed his grace on…” but “May God shed His grace on…” This is made amply clear in the “Pilgrim Feet” verse, where the understood “may” becomes explicit:
Remember that the author is a professor at a women’s college, an 1890s liberal in a Boston marriage. Against the big business interests of the time, she is calling on God to remind them of their heritage and their moral responsibility to Him.
And there’s a fair amount of speculation that this poem (or parts of it) originated as a love poem to her lesbian partner.
Kinda puts a different meaning to lines like
doesn’t it?
Always makes me laugh when the bule-stocking fundamentalists suggest using this to replace the Star Spangled Banner, because that started as a (gasp) drinking song.
It’s poetry-grammar. Didn’t any of you folks have to diagram a sentence?
In non-poetic, more conventional phrase order:
God shed his grace on thee for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, et. al.
In poetic reverse-order grammer, therefore:
O Beautiful! For spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, et. al, God shed his grace on thee!
“For” is to indicate that the list of beautiful attributes comprise the reason why God oughts shed his grace on thee.
That suggestion was offered toward the beginning of this thread, but as was noted by the one suggesting it, there’s something mighty strange about saying God “should” shed his “grace” on something due to its positive attributes. Anyway, that’s not how people talk about “grace” in the states these days. Maybe things were different then maybe?
That would imply then, that “God shed his grace on thee” is in the past tense? What of the next line, then?
“…and crown thy good with brotherhood”? Is it in fact “crowned”? I confess I haven’t seen any official written version of the lyrics in some time.
If it is “crown”, as I think it is, then it is a further third-person exhortation to God that began with “shed His grace on thee”, in which case the singer is exhorting God to do these things “for spacious skies”, etc. “O Beautiful” and “America, America” are then vocative-case interjections in the verse.
In other words, I think lowbrass got it in post #5.