Let's fast-forward from the events of April 18th, 1775 almost 100 years, to 1860. Once again, this land was in turmoil, and it looked as though the Union, divided over the issue of slavery, could be ruptured by civil war. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visits Old North. Longfellow was not only a celebrity poet, but also an abolitionist, and a man committed to the ideal the Union. He climbs up into Old North's bell tower, and he comes away from that visit inspired. He begins to write a new poem: "Paul Revere's Ride". Longfellow's poem takes quite a few liberties with the historic facts and what really happened on the night of April 18th, 1775. And it's not because Longfellow didn't know better—he was superbly educated, and he knew the true story. His choices were deliberate. Longfellow's poem presents us with an "every-man" hero—someone who could be any of us. The language sweeps us along and inspires us to feel that sense of urgency, to share that alarm that there is a threat to the nation. We, the readers, are the people in the countryside being called to do what we can to restore the Union. Longfellow's poem is his call to active citizens, and it is his act of citizenship that pen in fact can be a powerful tool, and a tale well-told can inspire change.
Please enjoy Rick Taylor's performance of "Paul Revere's Ride". This video was captured at Old North in March 2021, and is a rare treat for both eye and ear!
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Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.
On the 18th of April in 75, 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 on 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 iron.
Then he said goodnight 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,
up 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. Up 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 chamber 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 low as he looks at 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 on a village street, a shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark and
beneath from the pebbles and passing, a spark struck out by that 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 that spark struck out by that steed and 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, his heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. It was 12 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 he 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 at Concord town, he heard the bleeding of the flock
and the twitter of birds among the trees and he 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 when 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 born on the night wind of the
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 steam and the midnight message of Paul Revere.
