 the sights that she saw on her travels. Two years after writing her poem, Bates published it in the Congregationalist, calling it America, a poem for July 4th. It didn't take long for the words to catch on. By the time Miss Bates released a new version in 1911, it had been set to music, Samuel Ward's familiar tune, Materna, and become, if not the national anthem, an anthem for Independence Day.