Paul Revere’s Ride

      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.

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.