Supplanted by the vilest rag
That ever host to rapine led?
Thou emblem of a tyrant’s sway,
Thy triple hues are dyed in gore;
Like his, thy power has passed away,
Like his, thy short-lived triumph’s o’er.
In a footnote Mrs. Moodie explains that ‘the vilest rag’ is the tri-colored flag assumed by the rebels. The use of the phrase has, of course, both psychological and aesthetic warrant. The thought of the tri-colored flag, of its earlier bloody history in the French Revolution, revolted her sense of nobility and righteousness, and, like Homer’s, her diction and imagery sank in correspondence with the fall in the spiritual dignity of her subject. Aesthetically viewed, she was quite justified in sinking and rising with the emotional dignity of her subject. She sinks in the third stanza, but rises magniloquently in the fifth (final) stanza. Thus:—
By all the blood for Britain shed
On many a glorious battlefield,
To the free winds her standard spread,