Suggestive programs for special day exercises/Our Nations Birthday/The Flag of Seventy-six
THE FLAG OF ’SEVENTY-SIX.
[Air: The Red, White, and Blue.]
Wake the song to the nation’s defenders,
The years of prosperity glow;
The natal day welcome that renders
The love that to valor we owe;
Wake the song where our fathers, undaunted,
Proclaimed, when the nation was new,
That their ensign for liberty planted
Should be to the Right ever true.
To the Right, to the Right ever true,
To the Right, to the Right ever true.
The ensign for liberty planted,
Should be to the Right ever true.
When the Red Cross of England contended
With the Lilies of France, in their might,
Our fathers arose and defended
For freedom, the cause of the Right;
Then dared they the sceptre to sever;
For the Right, the far, forest ways they trod,
And templed the fair hills, wherever
Their faces were lifted to God.
Again at this altar that binds us,
The faith of the past we’ll renew,—
Two hundred years fading behind us,
A thousand years rising to view.
And as long as the fair constellations
Shall lighten the heavens with gold,
Shall the banner of right be the Nation's
And ever for right be unrolled.