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Our Home and Personal Duty

Chapter 56: THE AMERICAN FLAG
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About This Book

A civics reader for young children presents a program of early citizenship training that emphasizes habit formation in civic virtues—obedience, cleanliness, orderliness, courtesy, helpfulness, punctuality, truthfulness, care of property, fair play, honesty, respect, courage, self-control, perseverance, thrift, kindness to animals, and safety—and uses stories, poems, songs, games, and dramatization to teach them. It moves from home relations to community and public services, illustrating how local tradespeople and public workers embody cooperative interdependence, and offers lesson questions, suggested activities, and an outline aligned with the child's widening circles of experience to help teachers turn examples into practical civic habits.

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:
She mingled with her gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle-bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land!
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Flag of the free heart’s hope and home!
By angel hands to valor given!
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us,
With Freedom’s soil beneath our feet,
And Freedom’s banner streaming o’er us!
Joseph Rodman Drake.