Lafayette was greeted everywhere with specially composed songs and other music. In Baltimore a naval officer, Captain R. T. Spence, serenaded the illustrious visitor to the tune of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a lofty ode of six stanzas, “Soldier of Fame.” Printed in the National Intelligencer (November 9, 1824), stanza 2 of Captain Spence’s ode went:
Full of honors and years, he is spared by his God To visit the home of the happy once more;
Vera Brodsky Lawrence Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents (Macmillan: 1975), 231.
The path of his glory triumphantly trod,
With Victory perch’d on the standard he bore, Invited, he comes, ‘mid the shouts of the world, The shouts of Ten Millions who gladden our clime—
The “Star Spangled Banner” so proudly unfurl’d—
The page of his Glory immortal as Time.
