O say can you drill, by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the wellhead’s last gleaming,

Whose drill bits and flood lamps through the perilous fight,

O’er the mud pits we watched, were so gallantly reaming?

And the flare stack’s red glare, the crude bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our rig was still there;

O say does that oil-spattered derrick yet stand,

O’er our new vassal serfs and their occupied land?