America the dutiful

Lightning clouds have been lit before

But seldom so magnificent

 as they shone that day

One twenty oh nine

Not lit from above

by the rays of smiling Sun

But from terra firma

beamed another brilliant Son

America's newest bulb

gleaming upward, onward, on

To a place this civilization

Had never ever seen; or been; or dreamed

So soon it would have come upon.

Came this gifted pied and pious piper

who'd piped a parched planet

to Sam's edge of clear-as-crystal water,
 time and recent time again

that it might drink of new elixir.

 This time they came in suffrage to the levy

to see, to hear, to be, to care,

to smile, to laugh, to tears of joy.

America had done what it had to do.