Flag Day
What Do You See When The Flag Goes By?
What do you see when the flag goes by?
Just a banner of red and white and blue?
Just a patch of gay color against the sky?
What does it mean to you?
Perhaps a vision comes of Betsy Ross—
Red cheeks aflame to meet her land’s appeal,
White, skillful fingers stitching patiently,
And blue eyes flashing with an ardent zeal.
Perhaps some think of blue colonial coats
At Valley Forge that winter long ago,
And crimson stains left by bare patriot feet
That still trudged on across the fields of snow.
To some the red is martyred President’s blood;
The white, Potomac’s city, fair to view,
Across the stream from Arlington where sleep
In honored peace the men who wore the blue.
And some will see the poppies flaming red
Beneath blue skies that lie across the sea,
And brave young souls made white by sacrifice—
The sacrifice by which a world is free.
What do you see when the flag goes by?
Just a banner of red and white and blue?
Just a patch of gay color against the sky?
What does it mean to you?
—B. Y. Williams.
O That Starry Banner
O that starry, starry banner,
Do I know its hallowed worth?
Have I felt the pangs of anguish
Such as wrought its sacred birth?
Is it mine? Have I helped make it
Emblem of fair Liberty?
In those red bars, is there mingled
Blood that was a part of me?
Are those white bars made more stain free
By my living, living right?
Is it I who’ve helped to keep them,
Keep them bars of spotless white?
And that field of purest azure—
Field of Heaven’s high-born blue—
Have I helped to guard that blueness
By my living, living true?
—H. Fortesquire.
Alternate Reading: I Peter 5: 1-11.