BEYOND THE DESERT
BEYOND THE DESERT
THE GREATER FLAG
Fling out its folds to the winds of earth from every crest and crag,Roll strong salute from a million throats to honor this greater flag;The flag of a larger freedom, the flag of a wider trust,From the Arctic snow-peaks circling to the sun-scourged desert dust:Flower of the New World’s morning; noon promise and prophesy,Spanning the reach of endeavor into the vast To Be:Broadening its stripes that their shadow shelter a mightier brood,A nation reckoned of nations, fearless of temper and mood.Never the past forgetting, to the hope of the past still true;But formed to a larger stature ’neath skies of a deeper blue;Grown to a fuller being; wise with the price of the years;The wisdom born of mistakes outwrought, the tenderness taught of tears;Strong with the pain of the purchase, tense muscle and sweat of brow,When Destiny over the nation’s heart drove deep its iron plow,Fit with the brawn of battle for guarding the ways of peace,That the factions of evil dwindle and the forces of right increase.Hemmed no more in the cradle by the marge of the Eastern Sea,No more for a home-hedged people the Stars of the West float free;As the pine to its tall pride reaches, as the man to his power and prime,So the life of the nation broadens, strong-souled, to its riper time:With the might of a Titan impulse, a million hands at the wheel;A million minds far-serving, a million hearts to feel;Upborn as a ship sea-driven when the full tides sweep and roll,In the track of the gods fore-destined to the one unchanging goal.In the front of the great World-Shapers given to lead and mold,Lining the course of the New to plumb with the tried of the Old:On the broad foundation whose mortar was leavened with blood and tears,Rounding the temple fore-tokened in dreams of prophets and seers;Wide-domed as the vault of heaven; including as heaven includes;Puny and strong alike, full-handed or bare of goods:Holding no caste in justice, no fief of air and light—Not flung as a bone to beggars but ceded a primal right.No more shall the Grail of the ages for the few be sought and won;But alike and alike the sharing when the strife is striven and done.Each man by the flag above him bound to his bravest and best;To full, free chance for his making, to room for his highest quest;Bound by the flag above him to reckon his brother’s need;Bound by the flag above him to hearken and help and heedThe voices crying in darkness, as the crying of kind and kin;The call of the scourged and outcast, as the call of the housed within.Unfurl its folds to the winds of earth from every crest and crag;Roll strong salute from a million throats to honor this greater flag;The flag of a larger freedom, the flag of a wider trust;From the Arctic snow-peaks waving to the sun-scourged desert dust;With the light of its starry halo out-tossed on the utmost seas,And its stripes in the sunshine rippling caressed by the farthest breeze;With the hope of the hearts that won it our torch and beacon still,And the blood yet red for its keeping that flowed on Bunker Hill.