"One Flag" by Jonathan E. Hoag (1925)

                            One Flag

                        BY J. E. HOAG

Yes, from youth’s fall dream have I lov’d the Flag,

        As it proudly floats on the morning breeze,

Rais’d high o’er the vale and the fortress crag,

        And rich in its dauntless memories.

Long hast thou stood for what men most prize;

        Long hath a grateful world been proud

To do thee homage with ardent eyes,

        And carol thy praises, clear and loud.

And today, Old Flag, as I give salute

        To the starry folds floating o’er my head,

I halt for a moment, aw’d and mute,

        At the valor of those whom thou hast led.

Tho’ colors may fall from the pulseless hand,

        There are always others to bear them on,

And the thinning smoke of the night’s last stand

        Shows the Old Flag floating high at dawn.

So now as I hail thee with reverent mien

        I feel the love that I felt of yore;

As one since our youth, Old Flag, we’ve been,

        Thou and I who am now turn’d ninetyfour!

Vista Buena, Greenwich, July 14, 1925.

Troy Times. August 19, 1925: 14 col 2.

Jonathan E. Hoag was, among other things, a "[p]oet living in and around Troy, N.Y., who entered amateur journalism late in life. [H.P. Lovecraft] wrote birthday poems to him from 1918 to 1927 [published in the Troy Times and elsewhere]; they presumably corresponded, but no letters have surfaced. Hoag's descriptions of the Catskill Mountains may have contributed to the topographical atmosphere of [Lovecraft's] 'Beyond the Wall of Sleep' and 'The Lurking Fear,' set there. HPL compiled and wrote an introduction to Hoag's Poetical Works (privately printed, 1923); it constituted the first appearance of a work by HPL in hardcover."

Joshi, S.T. and David E. Schultz, eds. "Hoag, Jonathan E[than] [sic] (1831-1927)." An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. 112.

Jonathan Elihu Hoag is interred at Greenwich Cemetery, Greenwich NY