An inquiry into the lyric, using the Oxford English Dictionary, soon confirms the worst. Only a lawyer would be able to argue with certainty. No, of course not. The next lines provide some clues. This presents a difficulty.
History is silent on the subject.
This may explain the choice of melody for Key's lyric. Whether he was seeing flags flapping in the eastern sky or whether he tried to swim the streets of Baltimore upon disembarkation has not been recorded. Lawyers love the limelight. Whose broad stripes and bright stars. Oxford gives twenty-three definitions of the nomnial form, nine of the verbal, plus two obscure usages having to do with dermatological abnormalities and tumors in horses.