Paul Revere’s Ride

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next: a history story and a literature story. Paul Revere’s Ride is a poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and it commemorates the actions of American patriot Paul Revere on April eighteenth, seventeen seventy-five. Longfellow was inspired to write the poem after visiting the Old North Church in Boston and climbing its tower on April fifth, eighteen sixty. He wrote the poem the next day, and it was published in eighteen sixty-one. Here is a reading of that poem.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, on the eighteenth of eight 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 tonight, 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 rode 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 the tower of the Old North Church by the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, to the belfry chamber overhead, and startled the pigeons from their perch on the somber rafters that round him made masses and moving shapes of shade by the trembling ladders, steep and tall, to the highest window in the wall, where he paused to listen and looked down a moment on the roofs of the town, and the moonlight flowing over all. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead and 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 mountain ride, booted and spurred with a heavy stride, on the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse’s side, now gazed at 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 somber 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 flying 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 s, and beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, is the mystic meeting the ocean tides. And under the altars 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 won 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 after the sun goes down. It was won 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 redcoats 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, forborne 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 hoofbeats of that steed and the midnight message of Paul Revere.

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