The National Anthem Project was developed by The National Association for Music Education (MENC).  You can go to the homepage of the project here.

        For a better understanding of what the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner are about, you can study the history of our National Anthem.  Try these links:

This site is the most comprehensive Star Spangled Banner site we've found.

This is another school's lesson site on the Star Spangled Banner.

Here is a slide show presentation...click the space bar to change slides.

Here is a picture of the Francis Scott Key monument, in Baltimore.

The Smithsonian Museum of National History's Star Spangled Banner Site - About the actual flag that inspired Francis Scott Key.

A picture of an early (first?) printing of the Star Spangled Banner.

The Star Spangled Banner
1814
Words by Francis Scott Key, Music by John Stafford Smith

O 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, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say does that star spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists 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 in the stream:
‘Tis the Star-Spangled Banner! O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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 footsteps’ 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.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power 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!