Note THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER — Chapter II · (continued 2)
Reading edition
Page 317. The Star-Spangled Banner. The poem was really written at white heat, for Key made his first draft while the fight was actually in progress, and corrected it at Baltimore next day. It was at once struck off as a broadside, and was received with great enthusiasm. The air, from which it is inseparable, was selected almost at random, from a volume of flute music, by an actor named Ferdinand Durang, and was known as "Anacreon in Heaven." Additional stanzas have been written for the poem from time to time, but none of them are in any way notable except those written during the Civil War by Oliver Wendell Holmes: