"Oh beautiful FOR spacious skies..".......why "for"?

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 … :slight_smile: )

Possibly “O beautiful [America] for spacious skies. . . .”

that still doesn’t make sense to me.
I would have expected syntax like “O beautiful America, thy spacious skies, thine
amber waves of grain…”

But “beautiful for” just sounds awkward.

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.

Hmmm… I like Dr. Drake’s explanation better. Forget mine.

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:

:wink:

I think “O Beautiful” is meant as a joyous interjection, such as “Hooray.” “Hooray for spacious skies!” is normal construction.

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.

I think that “for” has the same meaning as “for” in “I would have drowned if it was not for the life jacket”. As in, meaning because of, due to

To me

means

I think it goes a little bit like this–
Danish (or insert random nationality here) dude says to American dude:


“You really think your country is so beautiful? Beautiful for what?”***

American dude responds as he ticks off points on his fingers:

"Oh… beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains… (etc, etc,)"

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.

I was not aware that anyone had firmly established that she was lesbian. Boston marriages were not always between lesbians, you know.

As to the OP:

From Merriam Webster Online. This is the sense in which the word is being used.

Cite? (not the lesbian part, but that America the Beautiful specifically originated this way)

According to Wikipedia (which, of course, is not the last word in accuracy),

The “alabaster cities” part (of a later verse) was, I have heard, inspired by her visit to the Chicago World’s Fair.

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?

-FrL-

For as a poetic short cut to say “Stands For” that is how I always read it.

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.