What matter if where Boreas roars,
Or where sweet Zephyr smiles?
What matter if where eagle soars,
Or in the sunlit isles?
Thy flowing crimson stripes shall wave
Above the bluish brine,
Emblazoned ensign of the brave,
And Liberty enshrine!
Flag of the Free, still float on high
Through every age to come;
Bright beacon of the azure sky,
True light of Freedom’s dome.
Till nations all shall cease to grope
In vain for liberty,
Oh, shine, last lingering star of hope
Of all humanity!
Is there, in all our American poetry, a more eloquent apostrophe to our flag than that, not excepting even Joseph Rodman Drake’s? Perhaps the allusion to Attucks in the first stanza will require a note for the white reader. Every colored school-child, however, knows that Crispus Attucks was a brave and stalwart Negro, who, in the van of the patriots of Boston that resisted the British soldiers in the so-called “Boston Massacre,” March 5, 1770, fell with two British bullets in his breast, among the first martyrs for independence:
Thus Attucks brave, without a moment’s pause,
Full bared his breast in Freedom’s holy cause,
First fell and tore the code of Tyranny’s cruel laws—
