I attended an Eagle Court of Honor (Boy Scouts of America) and we sung three of the four verses of the National Anthem, skipping the third verse. We don't get many opportunities to sing more than the first verse. I was struck at the appropriateness of the fourth verse:
Oh! 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 Heav’n-rescued land Praise the Pow’r 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.
