Edgar Albert Guest, 'Lines For A Flag Raising Ceremony'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Cross-post from war_poetry:

Lines For A Flag Raising Ceremony

Full many a flag the breeze has kissed;
Through ages long the morning sun
Has risen over the early mist
The flags of men to look upon.
And some were red against the sky,
And some with colors true were gay,
And some in shame were born to die,
For Flags of hate must pass away.
Such symbols fall as men depart,
Brief is the reign of arrant might;
The vicious and the vile at heart
Give way in time before the right.

A flag is nothing in itself;
It but reflects the lives of men;
And they who lived and toiled for pelf
Went out as vipers in a den.
God cleans the sky from time to time
Of every tyrant flag that flies,
And every brazen badge of crime
Falls to the ground and swiftly dies.
Proud kings are mouldering in the dust;
Proud flags of ages past are gone;
Only the symbols of the just
Have lived and shall keep living on.

( So long as we shall serve the truth, )

By Edgar Albert Guest
(1919)