THE AMERICAN FLAG. When Freedom, from her mountain height, Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there! And striped its pure celestial white Majestic monarch of the cloud! Who rear'st aloft thy regal form, When stride the warriors of the storm Flag of the brave! Thy folds shall fly, Like shoots of flame on midnight's pall; And cowering foes shall shrink beneath Flag of the seas! On ocean wave Shall look at once to heaven and thee, Flag of the free heart's hope and home, Thy stars have lit the welkin dome And all thy hues were born in heaven! That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled, -Joseph Rodman Drake. The author of The American Flag was born to poverty, but by hard work he obtained a good education, and studied medicine under Dr. Nicholas Romayne, by whom he was greatly beloved. He obtained his degree and shortly afterward, in October, 1816, he was married to Sarah Eckford, who brought him a good deal of wealth. Two years later, his health failing, he visited New Orleans for the winter, hoping for its recovery. He returned to New York in the spring, only to die in the following autumn, September, 1820, at the age of twentyfive. He is buried at Hunt's Point, in Westchester County, New York, where he spent some of the years of his boyhood. On his monument are these lines, written by his friend, Fitz-Green Halleck,— "None knew him but to love him, Nor named him but to praise." Drake was a poet from his childhood. The anec dotes preserved of his early youth show the fertility of his imagination. His first rhymes were a conundrum which he perpetrated when he was but five years old. He was one day, for some childish offense, punished by imprisonment in a portion of the garret shut off by some wooden bars. His sisters stole up to witness his suffering condition, and found him pacing the room, with something like a sword on his shoulder, watching an incongruous heap on the floor, in the character of Don Quixote at his vigils over the armor in the church. He called a boy of his acquaintance, named Oscar, "Little Fingal;" his ideas from books thus early seeking embodiment in living shapes. In the same spirit the child listened with great delight to the stories of an old neighbor lady about the Revolution. He would identify himself with the scene, and once, when he had given her a very energetic account of a ballad which he had read, upon her remarking that it was a tough story, he quickly replied, with a deep sigh: "Ah! we had it tough enough that day, ma'am." Drake wrote The Mocking-Bird, one of his poems which has lived and will live, when a mere boy. It shows not only a happy facility but an unusual knowledge of the imitative faculty in the young poets of his time. The American Flag was written in May, 1819, when the author was not quite twenty-four. It has |