University of Virginia Library

THE FLAG IN NATURE.

All Nature sings wildly the song of the free;
The red, white, and blue float o'er land and o'er sea,—
The white, in each billow that breaks on the shore;
The blue, in the arching that canopies o'er
The land of our birth, in its glory outspread;
And sunset dyes deepen and glow into red.
Day fades into night, and the red stripe retires;
But stars, o'er the blue, light their sentinel fires.
And though night be gloomy, with clouds overspread,
Each star holds its place in the field overhead;
When scatter the clouds, and the tempest is through,
We count every star in the field of the blue.