Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
Covering all my lands all my seashores lining!
Flag of death! (how I watch’d you through the smoke of battle pressing!
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
Flag cerulean sunny flag, with the orbs of night dappled!
Ah my silvery beauty ah my woolly white and crimson
Ah to sing the song of you my matron mighty!
My sacred one, my mother.
–Walt Whitman (1812 – 1892)