"The Rising" is the title track on Bruce Springsteen's 12th studio album The Rising, and was released as a single in 2002. Springsteen wrote the song in reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City. It gained critical praise and earned Grammy Awards for Best Rock Song and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, as well as a nomination for Song of the Year. Rolling Stone named it the 35th best song of the decade.VH1 placed it 81st on its list of the "100 Greatest Songs of the '00s".

The song was written late in The Rising's development, and was meant as a bookend to the album's "Into the Fire". Springsteen could not let go of one of the central images of that day, those who were "ascending into ... what?" Thus, the song tells the story of a New York City Fire Department firefighter, climbing one of the World Trade Center towers after the hijacked planes had hit them during the September 11 attacks. The lyric depicts the surreal, desperate environment in which he finds himself:

The choruses are more upbeat, featuring a more pronounced drum part and "Li, li, li" vocal parts that suggest Hallelujahs, but as the song progresses the verses trace the ever more dire situation. Images of fire engines and the Cross of Saint Florian are introduced, and then, in the cemetery-like "garden of a thousand sighs" from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, a series of final visions: his wife, his children, and all human experience:

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