<P> "America the Beautiful" is an American patriotic song . The lyrics were written by Katharine Lee Bates, and the music was composed by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey . The two never met . </P> <P> Bates originally wrote the words as a poem, "Pikes Peak", first published in the Fourth of July edition of the church periodical The Congregationalist in 1895 . At that time, the poem was titled "America" for publication . Ward had originally written the music, "Materna", for the hymn "O Mother dear, Jerusalem" in 1882, though it was not first published until 1892 . Ward's music combined with the Bates poem was first published in 1910 and titled America the Beautiful . The song is one of the most popular of the many U.S. patriotic songs . </P> <P> In 1893, at the age of 33, Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College, had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College . Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with its promise of the future contained within its gleaming white buildings; the wheat fields of America's heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 16; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Pikes Peak . </P> <P> On the pinnacle of that mountain, the words of the poem started to come to her, and she wrote them down upon returning to her hotel room at the original Antlers Hotel . The poem was initially published two years later in The Congregationalist to commemorate the Fourth of July . It quickly caught the public's fancy . Amended versions were published in 1904 and 1911 . </P>

Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears meaning