The Flag still floats unblotted with defeat! But ah the blood that keeps its ripples red, The starry lives that keep its field alight.

The lines juxtapose national symbolism with the human cost that sustains it. The flag “floats unblotted with defeat,” suggesting an ideal of national continuity or honor that appears untouched by loss. The speaker immediately undercuts that clean image—“But ah the blood…”—insisting that the flag’s vividness is metaphorically dyed by sacrifice. “Ripples red” evokes both the flag’s stripes and the flow of blood, while “starry lives” links the stars to individual lives extinguished or offered up, whose memory keeps the “field” (the blue canton) “alight.” The effect is elegiac and critical: patriotic emblems are inseparable from the lives spent to defend or advance the nation.