Our Glory, "Old Glory"

John T. Griffin

There flies our flag.

It flies in the faces of our foes.
It embraces our friends.
It protects us with its strength.
Its strength came from us,
It was nurtured by our blood,
It drew its life from us.
We gave our flag its life.

We gave our lives for it
At Concord and Breeds Hill,
At Antietam and Gettysburg,
On San Juan Hill and at Manila Bay,
In the Argonne and at the Marne,
At Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima,
Kaserene Pass and the Hills of Rome,
The Normandy Coast and the 38th Parallel,
At Saigon, Hanoi, and in fields of rice.

There, on foreign soil, our bodies fell,
And returned our blood to alien earth.
Yet our flag has roots so wide
That they have spanned the vast, briny tides
To guard us in our distant graves.
Our flag, for us, by us, survives
Fed by the blood we shed.
Our love, our honor, our sacrifice
That we, the warriors, readily made
To save our nation and its flag,
Are enveloped in its every fold.

Our flag is but a symbol, true,
Only cloth of red and white and blue,
Yet we know that this is also true:
That cloth was rent by shot and shell,
Its red came from the blood we shed,
Its white came from God's clouds above,
And our valor gleams as its deep blue.

It now is yours and mine to guard
With love and heartfelt respect
Against all who would its glory defile.
For, if we deny our duty to our flag,
Our flag's disgrace will curse our deaths.

Reprinted from Old Glory News, Citizens Flag Alliance, March 2000