O beautiful
For spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
We sing that proudly and clearly, but the syntax has always bothered me. Where are the subject and verb of that sentence? Answer: nowhere. In fact, the only verbs in the entire first verse are "shed" and "crown" As near as I can tell, that first sentence consists of an adjective and four prepositional phrases.
The second verse DOES have the required subject and verb ("feet beat"), as does the third verse ("heroes loved") and the fourth verse ("dream sees"), but I maintain that the first verse of our beloved anthem is a sentence fragment.
Purists will, of course, challenge me for attempting to parse what was clearly intended as imagery-filled poetry. They're right.
While investigating this, I learned a fascinating tidbit: this poem was not immediately associated with the melody we now hold so dear. In fact, in its early life, it was often sung to "Auld Lang Syne", and the combination actually works very well. Try it!
