Flag Day
Author Unknown
What's a flag? What's the love of country for
which it stands? Maybe it begins with love of
the land itself. It is the fog rolling in with the
tide at Eastport, or through the Golden Gate
and among the towers of San Francisco. It is
the sun coming up behind the White Mountains, over the Green, throwing a shining
glory on Lake Champlain and above the Adirondacks. It is the storied Mississippi rolling
swift and muddy past St. Louis, rolling past
Cairo, pouring down past the levees of New
Orleans. It is lazy noontide in the pines of
Carolina, it is a sea of wheat rippling in
Western Kansas, it is the San Francisco peaks
far north across the glowing nakedness of
Arizona, it is the Grand Canyon and a little
stream coming down out of a New England
ridge, in which are trout.
It is men at work. It is the storm-tossed
fishermen coming into Gloucester and Provincetown and Astoria. It is the farmer riding
his great machine in the dust of harvest, the
dairyman going to the barn before sunrise,
the lineman mending the broken wire, the
miner drilling for the blast. It is the servants
of fire in the murky splendor of Pittsburgh,
between the Allegheny and the Monongahela, the trucks rumbling through the night,
the locomotive engineer bringing the train in
on time, the pilot in the clouds, the riveter
running along the beam a hundred feet in
the air. It is the clerk in the office, the housewife doing the dishes and sending the children off to school. It is the teacher, doctor
and parson tending and helping, body and
soul, for small reward.
It is small things remembered, the little
corners of the land, the houses, the people
that each one loves. We love our country because there was a little tree on a hill, and grass
thereon, and a sweet valley below; because
the hurdy-gurdy man came along on a sunny
morning in a city street; because a beach or a
farm or a lane or a house that might not seem
much to others were once, for each of us,
made magic. It is voices that are remembered
only, no longer heard. It is parents, friends,
the lazy chat of street and store and office,
and the ease of mind that makes life tranquil.
It is Summer and Winter, rain and sun and
storms. These are flesh of our flesh, bone of
our bone, blood of our blood, a lasting part of
what we are, each of us and all of us together.
It is stories told. It is the Pilgrims dying in
their first dreadful Winter. It is the minute
man standing his ground at Concord Bridge,
and dying there. It is the army in rags, sick,
freezing, starving at Valley Forge. It is the
wagons and the men on foot going westward
over Cumberland Gap, floating down the
great rivers, rolling over the great plains. It is
the settler hacking fiercely at the primeval
forest on his new, his own lands. It is Thoreau at Walden Pond, Lincoln at Cooper
Union, and Lee riding home from Appomattox. It is corruption and disgrace, answered always by men who would not let the
flag lie in the dust, who have stood up in
every generation to fight for the old ideals
and the old rights, at risk of ruin or of life itself.
It is a great multitude of people on pilgrimage, common and ordinary people, charged
with the usual human failings, yet filled with
such a hope as never caught the imaginations
and the hearts of any nation on earth before.
The hope of liberty. The hope of justice. The
hope of a land in which a man can stand
straight, without fear, without rancor.
The land and the people and the flag the
land a continent, the people of every race, the
flag a symbol of what humanity may aspire to
when the wars are over and the barriers are
down: to these each generation must be dedicated and consecrated anew, to defend with
life itself, if need be, but, above all, in friendliness, in hope, in courage, to live for.
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