A Song for Flag Day

Spirits of Drake and Key, inspire my song
With something of the vital, living fire
That thrilled you when your fingers swept along
Our country's earlier lyre!

For I, in these red days of battle flame,
When half the stricken world is mad with Mars,
And lilied Peace seems a forgotten name,
Would sing the Stripes and Stars!

Although begot in strife, and first unfurled
O'er rude Fort Stanwix in the wilderness,
Our flag before the wide eyes of the world
Stands not for storm and stress.

Though we may glory that it waved on high
When cheers at Yorktown rang from lip to lip,
That it heard Lawrence's immortal cry
Of "Don't give up the ship!"

That o'er Chapultepec's stark heights it tossed
When valor upward urged to victory,
And led, when an ill-fated cause was lost,
With Sherman to the sea;

And that it fluttered proudly at the peak
Above the challenging cannon's rage and roar,
When Dewey swept defiant through the reek
Past stern Corregidor;

Nor stripe nor clustered star has ever shone
Save but for freedom, for the broader birth
Of liberty, — the dearer, clearer dawn
Of brotherhood on earth.

Wave, then, O banner! May thy mission be
To heal the grievous wounds, the woeful scars,
Triumphant over wrong and tyranny,
Belovèd Stripes and Stars!