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250 Years Ago
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”
Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,—
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,—
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Published in General
Something interesting here, but it doesn’t allow for pre-positioning that I’ve ever been able to do.
Far more than a spark… God save America.
A shout out to @percival for posting Longfellow’s classic. This ought to be promoted to the Main Feed immediately.
I haven’t read it through in decades, so it was moving.
One passage in particular, that begins with the abrupt, puzzling words, “And one was…”
“One what was?” Then as I read on and quickly saw the answer, I was transported from the world of “reading a Romantic era poem” to the real world of the living and the dying. A real “one” American patriot centuries ago, and also one Concord-on-an-April-morning cold gravestone, that I could be touching and writing a poem about today, maybe. A real and known “one”–we know with historical certainty that “one”, in fact, WAS. Was sleeping, or maybe was not, having just been awakened by a strange feeling of dread.
But suddenly here are no Romantic metaphors about sights and sounds and actions. Revere didn’t see him or hear him, the man on the ladder didn’t either, so our narrator can’t report any experiences or feelings on their behalf. In a sense the one and his wife would only acquire their identities later that day, when the British musket ball pierced the militiaman’s body and he fell over. From Revere’s point of view anyway.
I will stop there because I can’t explain all my thoughts and feelings, or even list them in a reasonable number of lines.
One of the more brilliant sitcom lines of the 90’s:
“A bird in the hand is worth two if by sea!” –Nina Van Horn, Just Shoot Me
More solemnly, thank you for posting this. It’s an excellent read and an exciting one. Well done, Mr. Longfellow.
Longfellow’s poetic license is on display here. Revere himself has left us two written accounts. One is a 1775 deposition provided to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress which was collecting eyewitness accounts of what occurred on Lexington Green. The other was a letter to historian Jeremy Belknap.
Dr. Warren and the Sons of Liberty had dispatched two riders to make sure that John Handcock (President of the first Continental Congress and soon to be President of the second) and Samuel Adams (instigator/ringleader of the Boston Tea Party and noted radical) who were staying at Lexington had made themselves scarce before the British arrived. Revere and William Dawes took separate paths to Lexington–Revere across the river from Cambridge and Dawes by land over Boston Neck. Revere expected Dawes to arrive first, particularly after an encounter with a British patrol had forced a detour on Revere’s planned route. When Revere arrived first, he assumed Dawes had been detained or arrested, but Billy rode up a half hour after Revere’s arrival. By that time, the Sons of Liberty’s spy network had been fully alerted, and word spread in every direction. After the accomplishment of their primary mission, Revere and Dawes departed for Concord, where military stores were held. On the way, they picked up a fellow traveler, Dr. William Prescott, a Concord physician paying a late night house call to Lexington. He joined them and was with them when they encountered a bigger British patrol. Dawes and Prescott made good their escape; Revere was captured and recognized. He joined a number of Americans who the British had already detained.
The major in charge of the British patrol asked Revere what the meaning of the gunshots they frequently heard was. Revere replied that the guns were to alert the militia that the British were moving, and that there would be 1,500 men under arms before dawn. This suggested to a suddenly nervous officer that he may have crossed over from being the hunter to being the hunted, and he released all the other prisoners (sans horses). Shortly thereafter, Revere’s horse was commandeered by a member of the patrol whose horse was tired and he too was released without a mount.
Prescott made it through to Concord. Revere was present in Lexington when the British swept the Minutemen from the Green, but didn’t witness the fight as he was employed removing some of Handcock’s papers.
In defense of Longfellow, he can be forgiven for getting a few minor details…ok, basically the whole story…wrong, when Hardly a man was then alive Who remembered that famous day and year, of the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five.
Somewhere Steve Martin says he got the facts right in the lyrics.
This poem means a lot to me. It’s the first one I recall reading. I had to look up words like “sombre,” “spectral,” and “kindled.” More than that, it sparked my interest in the Revolution. I read everything I could lay my hands on for quite a while.
I taught elementary school for many years, and when we learned about the American Revolution (I taught it in 4th and 5th grade in two different states.) I found a fine version of this poem on YouTube. The poem was recited with captions of the words, and drawings/paintings of the events being described. I’d post it, but I can’t find it now. Anyway…it was awesome!! The students were very intrigued and were not put off by the old-fashioned vocabulary. We talked about what some of those words meant. But they were excited about the whole concept of the Revolution. As we learned about different aspects of the Townsend Acts, it was interesting to see how outraged they were to find out about the Quartering Act! That one really peeved them: No one paid you for feeding and bedding a soldier that you didn’t even invite to live with you?? NO WAY! I’m not surprised to find that there was a person like Israel Bissel. But I still appreciate Paul Revere’s contribution and Revere did a lot of other things, too.
I made several trips for meetings at Hanscom Field and always in awe seeing the Constitution in the harbor and being right there between Lexington and Concord….and the location of Sleepy Hollow.