Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Flag
Uncover when the flag goes by, boys,
’Tis freedom’s starry banner that you greet,
Flag famed in song and story
Long may it wave, old glory
The flag that has never known defeat.
Charles L. Benjamin and George D. Sutton. The Flag That Has Never Known Defeat.
Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A flash of color beneath the sky:
Hats off!
The flag is passing by.
Henry H. Bennett—The Flag Goes By.
United States, your banner wears
Two emblems—one of fame;
Alas! the other that it bears
Reminds us of your shame.
Your banner’s constellation types
White freedom with its stars,
But what’s the meaning of the stripes?
They mean your negroes’ scars.
Campbell—To the Untied States of North America. (1838). (See also Lunt for answer to same.)
The meteor flag of England.
Campbell—Ye Mariners of England.
Ye mariners of England!
That guard our native seas;
Whose flag has braved a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!
Campbell—Ye Mariners of England.
Fling out, fling out, with cheer and shout,
To all the winds Our Country’s Banner!
Be every bar, and every star,
Displayed in full and glorious manner!
Blow, zephyrs, blow, keep the dear ensign flying!
Blow, zephyrs, sweetly mournful, sighing, sighing, sighing!
Abraham Coles—The Microcosm and other Poems. P. 191.
If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.
John A. Dix—Speeches and Addresses. Vol. II. P. 440. An Official Dispatch. Jan. 29, 1861.
When Freedom from her mountain height
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there.
Joseph Rodman Drake—The Croakers. The American Flag. St. 1.
Flag of the free heart’s hope and home!
By angel hands to valour given,
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome;
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Joseph Rodman Drake—The Croakers. The American Flag. St. 5.
A moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole,
It does not look likely to stir a man’s soul.
’Tis the deeds that were done ’neath the moth-eaten rag,
When the pole was a staff, and the rag was a flag.
Gen. Sir E. Hamley. Referring to the Colors of the 43rd Monmouth Light Infantry.
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky.
Holmes—A Metrical Essay.
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the God of storms,
The lightning and the gale.
Holmes—A Metrical Essay.
Oh! say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming;
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there!
Oh! say, does that star spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
F. S. Key—Star-Spangled Banner. “To Anacreon in heaven, where he sat in full glee, / A few Sons of Harmony sent a petition, That he their inspirer and patron would be.” Ralph Tomlinson—To Anacreon in Heaven. Music by John Stafford Smith. Tune of The Star-Spangled Banner (between 1770 and 1775) to which F. S. Key set his words.
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must when our cause it is just.
And this be our motto, “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
F. S. Key—Star-Spangled Banner.
What is the flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,
Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there.
Kipling—The English Flag.
England! Whence came each glowing hue
That tints your flag of meteor light,—
The streaming red, the deeper blue,
Crossed with the moonbeams’ pearly white?
The blood, the bruise—the blue, the red—
Let Asia’s groaning millions speak;
The white it tells of colour fled
From starving Erin’s pallid cheek.
George Lunt. Answer to Campbell. In Newburyport News (Mass.).
Under the sooty flag of Acheron,
Harpies and Hydras.
Milton—Comus. L. 604.
The imperial ensign; which, full high advanced,
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. I. L. 536.
Under spreading ensigns moving nigh, in slow
But firm battalion.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. VI. L. 533.
Bastard Freedom waves
Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
Moore—To the Lord Viscount Forbes.
“A song for our banner?”—The watchword recall
Which gave the Republic her station;
“United we stand—divided we fall!”
It made and preserves us a nation!
George P. Morris—The Flag of Our Union. Probably inspired by Dickinson.
The flag of our Union forever!
George P. Morris—The Flag of Our Union.
Your flag and my flag,
And how it flies today
In your land and my land
And half a world away!
Rose-red and blood-red
The stripes forever gleam;
Snow-white and soul-white—
The good forefathers’ dream;
Sky-blue and true-blue, with stars to gleam aright—
The gloried guidon of the day, a shelter through the night.
Wilbur D. Nesbit—Your Flag and My Flag.
This is the song of the wind as it came,
Tossing the flags of the Nations to flame.
Alfred Noyes—Avenue of the Allies.
Yes, we’ll rally round the flag, boys, we’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom,
We will rally from the hill-side, we’ll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle-cry of Freedom.
George F. Root—Battle-Cry of Freedom.
A garish flag,
To be the aim of every dangerous shot.
Richard III. Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 89.
This token serveth for a flag of truce
Betwixt ourselves and our followers.
Henry VI. Pt. I. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 138.
She’s up there—Old Glory—where lightnings are sped,
She dazzles the nations with ripples of red,
And she’ll wave for us living, or droop o’er us dead—
The flag of our country forever.
Frank L. Stanton—Our Flag Forever.
Banner of England, not for a season,
O Banner of Britain, hast thou
Floated in conquering battle or flapt to the battle-cry!
Never with mightier glory, than when we had rear’d thee on high,
Flying at top of the roofs in the ghastly siege of Lucknow—
Shot thro’ the staff or the halyard, but ever we raised thee anew,
And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.
Tennyson—The Defence of Lucknow.
Might his last glance behold the glorious ensign of the Republic still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in all their original lustre.
Webster—Peroration of the reply to Hayne.
“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,” she said.
Whittier—Barbara Frietchie.
A star for every State, and a State for every star.
Robert C. Winthrop—Address on Boston Common. (1862).