Drake was a poet from his childhood. The anecdotes preserved of his early youth show the fertility of his imagination. His first rhymes were a conundrum which he perpetrated when he was but five years old. He was one day, for some childish offense, punished by imprisonment in a portion of the garret shut off by some wooden bars. His sisters stole up to witness his suffering condition, and found him pacing the room, with something like a sword on his shoulder, watching an incongruous heap on the floor, in the character of Don Quixote at his vigils over the armor in the church. He called a boy of his acquaintance, named Oscar, "Little Fingal;" his ideas from books thus early seeking embodiment in living shapes. In the same spirit the child listened with great delight to the stories of an old neighbor lady about the Revolution. He would identify himself with the scene, and once, when he had given her a very energetic account of a ballad which he had read, upon her remarking that it was a tough story, he quickly replied, with a deep sigh: "Ah! we had it tough enough that day, ma'am." Drake wrote _The Mocking-Bird_, one of his poems which has lived and will live, when a mere boy. It shows not only a happy facility but an unusual knowledge of the imitative faculty in the young poets of his time. [Illustration: _MOUNT HOOD_] _The American Flag_ was written in May, 1819, when the author was not quite twenty-four. It has remained unchanged except the last four lines. It originally concluded:-- "As fixed as yonder orb divine, That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled, Shall thy proud stars resplendent shine, The guard and glory of the world." These lines were very unsatisfactory to Drake, and he said to Fitz-Green Halleck, "Fitz, can't you suggest a better stanza?" Whereupon the brilliant author of _Marco Bozzaris_ sat down and wrote in a glowing burst of inspiration the four concluding lines:-- "Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us? With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us?" Drake immediately agreed that these were a splendid improvement on the former ending, and incorporated them into his one poem that is certain of immortality. It was first published in the New York _Evening Post_, in a series known as the _Croaker Pieces_, _The American Flag_ being the last one of the series. The young poet was entirely free from vanity and affectation, and had no morbid seeking for popular applause. When he was on his deathbed, at his wife's request, Doctor DeKay collected and copied all his poems which could be found and took them to him. "See, Joe," said he to him, "what I have done." "Burn them," he replied; "they are valueless."