April 18th brings memories. No, I wasn’t there, but along with the Charge of
the Light Brigade, these two are my favorite historical poetry. And love
reading it as prose, since so much is chopped when done in the sing-song of
4th graders. Read it with me today.
Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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 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 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 he 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 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 after 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, black 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 meadow 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 for evermore! 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.
~~
Dr Bob Griffin, www.grif.net
“Jesus knows me, this I love”