Newspaper History presents media sourced from a United States newspaper dating back 108 years.

  • Prayer for Home Land

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, November 1, 1914. By E. A. Guest.

    God bless the old United States,
        God keep her people strong;
    God guard the peace within her gates
        And fill her land with song.
    Teach us who dwell beneath her flag
        To cherish peaceful ways;
    To cease of cannon’s strength to brag
        And uniforms to praise.

    God bless the old United States,
        Where Freedom’s banner flies,
    Where joyously the mother waits
        With bright and smiling eyes,
    The father, coming home at night,
        His day of toiling done,
    And where to meet him with delight
        His happy children run.

    Here all the tears are honest tears
        And pain is honest pain,
    And here, secure throughout the years
        The toilers’ homes remain.
    Here firesides are not desolate
        By needless shot and shell,
    But honor and reward await
        The men who labor well.

    God bless the old United States,
        God bless her people, too;
    God keep forever at her gates
        The old red, white and blue.
    And may its beauties never die,
        But every year increase;
    God grant that flag shall ever fly
        Above a land at peace.