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 farm-yard 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 forever more;
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.
FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.
To the children of Cambridge, who presented to me, on my seventy-second birthday, February 27, 1879, this chair made from the wood of the Village Blacksmith’s chestnut tree.—Longfellow.
Am I a king, that I should call my own
|
The Danish king could not in all his pride
|