And they who for their country die shall fill an honored grave, for glory lights the soldier’s tomb, and beauty weeps the brave.

These lines come from Joseph Rodman Drake’s patriotic poem “The American Flag” (1819), written in the early post–War of 1812 period when American writers were helping shape a national literary voice and civic mythology. Drake, a New York physician and poet associated with the “Knickerbocker” circle, composed the poem as a celebration of the U.S. flag and as a tribute to military sacrifice. The quoted couplet belongs to a stanza that memorializes those who die in service, reflecting a Romantic-era tendency to dignify death in battle with imagery of glory, beauty, and public honor.

The couplet frames wartime death as both sanctified and aesthetically elevated: the fallen soldier’s grave is “honored,” illuminated by “glory,” and mourned by “beauty.” Drake fuses civic virtue with Romantic sentiment, turning private loss into public meaning. The language suggests that national identity is sustained by remembered sacrifice, and that commemoration—through poetry, ritual, and symbol (the flag)—transforms death into a lasting moral example. At the same time, the emphasis on “glory” and idealized mourning reveals how patriotic verse can console by idealizing violence, inviting readers to see the soldier’s tomb not as tragedy alone but as a site of collective reverence.