Post by Vanessa Gates-Elston

Happy 250th 🇺🇸♥️ 🤍 💙 🗽🌟  “America is a tune. It must be sung together.” Gerald Stanley Lee “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” Franklin D. Roosevelt "The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults." Alexis de Tocqueville "True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth.” Eleanor Roosevelt  “Freedom lies in being bold.” Robert Frost America by Walt Whitman, 1891-1892 Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old, Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, Chair’d in the adamant of Time. * The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” In Honor of July 4th ♥️🤍💙, the stunning poem written by Massachusetts native and Wellesley alumna and Professor, Katharine Lee Bates, we all know as a song, "America the Beautiful", written in 1893, hiking a 14,000 ft peak in Colorado: AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain! America!  America! God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law! O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America!  America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine! O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America!  America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!