SONG OF A NATION OUR ANTHEM DEFINES, TEACHES US.

Byline: Joseph Staub Local View

IN this terrible time, it is natural that we turn to music to help express our emotions, especially our resolve. The songs of the hour seem to be ``God Bless America,'' ``America the Beautiful,'' and Lee Greenwood's ``God Bless the U.S.A.''

While these songs are certainly appropriate for the occasion (though to me Greenwood's ``where at least I know I'm free'' line comes across as smarmy and weak-minded), we really should get back into playing and singing ``Yankee Doodle,'' a jaunty and attitude-laced ditty we stole from our oppressors and then used to mock them.

However, all these songs pale in comparison to the song in which we Americans have always best expressed our national will, as well as our determination not to be victims: ``The Star-Spangled Banner.''

The national anthem is a powerful work (as difficult to forget as it is to sing), and it speaks to the experiences of Americans both then and now.

Sure, it's ostensibly about a siege in Baltimore harbor during the War of 1812, a war in which our capital and other major cities were attacked. But more than that, it's about standing up to aggression, resisting fear, holding on to hope and being dedicated to victory.

The first verse, the one most people are familiar with, opens with a question, essentially ``Can you see the flag?'' which really means, in modern parlance, ``Are we still in the game?''

The question is couched in a series of gorgeous and daunting images that invoke the importance of the flag to the garrison at Fort McHenry - and to all Americans since.

The first verse also closes with a question, asking if the flag still waves over a nation that is ``the land of the free and the home of the brave.''

In this last line, it isn't the flag that's the focus but the kind of nation over which it flies.

Our duty as Americans is to be able this last question with a resounding yes!

More than the first verse, though, what comes to mind now is the rarely sung third verse. It is darker than the other verses, calling up images of the harsh realities of war and retribution. The first three lines ask what has happened to our enemies' determination to completely destroy us:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion

A home and country, shall leave us no more?

We know that havoc and confusion full well, don't we? We also know what it's like to hear an enemy swear to make us suffer.

The next line answers the questions of the first three. It tells us, in a chillingly straightforward manner, to what we dedicated ourselves to protect our homes and families:

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.

The verse goes on to describe exactly, then as now, what kind of people we are up against, and exactly, then as now, their ultimate fate:

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.

Francis Scott Key was writing about the subjects and mercenaries of what he saw as an aggressive tyrant king bent on our destruction.

In our day, the hirelings of the cowardly demagogues who so despise us have succeeded in bringing their insanity to our shores.

They are slaves as well, submissive to their own ignorance and hate.

And, like the song says, we will pursue these people unceasingly, hounding them from hole to hole, punishing those who harbor and support them, until we put them where they rightfully belong.

If we can't bring them to justice, maybe we'll have to bring justice to them.

What we must pray for (besides the memory of our murdered fellow citizens and their families) is that we can do all this without sacrificing the very freedoms we cherish.

Here again we can look to the third verse of our national anthem for guidance. It ends with an image of ultimate victory: the flag waving over a nation that has preserved both its security and its liberty:

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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Photo:

During a national day of remembrance for victims of Tuesday's terrorist attacks, people at Daley Plaza in Chicago wave flags and sing.

M. Spencer Green/Associated Press