The Land of the Weak and the Home of the Cruel

O say can you see by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Those broad smiles and bright eyes, through the madman's gunsight,
In the schoolrooms once safe, were no longer beaming?
And the barrels' red flare, shots shattering the air,
Gave proof through the day that our vice was still there;
O say does that ill-constituted right still rule,
O'er the land of the weak and the home of the cruel?