Since Homer upcycled the brutalities of the decade-long Trojan War into the epic elegance of the Iliad, poets have refashioned the messy stuff of history into the compelling argument of myth. Composed in 1860, just months before the bombing of Fort Sumter ignited a war that would threaten the very existence of the American experiment, “Paul Revere’s Ride” (which is sometimes referred to as “The Landlord’s Tale”), penned by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the young nation’s most vocal advocates for a national literature, reminds his imperiled nation at its most uncertain hour of its heroic past.

Longfellow draws on the historical figure of Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith and patriot. In April 1775, Revere rode from Boston to Concord to warn the colonists along the Massachusetts coast, particularly the minutemen in Concord and Lexington, of the approach of British troops determined to seize leaders of the independence movement—most notably John Hancock and Samuel Adams—as well as the colonists’ stores of gunpowder. The poem, a folk ballad with a galloping beat and an ear-friendly rhyme scheme, became a sensation and cemented Longfellow’s reputation as “America’s Poet.” The poem catapulted Revere, obscure before Longfellow’s poem, into prominence in American colonial history. As a study in the psychology of courage, Longfellow’s poem explores the dynamic between history and poetry, specifically how poets embellish the raw materials of history to create the myths that define a nation’s identity.

Poet Biography

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born February 27, 1807, in the seaport town of Portland, Maine, then part of Massachusetts. His father, an attorney, provided Longfellow and his seven siblings a comfortable life surrounded by culture and books. Early on, Longfellow was drawn to poetry. At 13, he published his first poem, an account of a bloody showdown between first-generation English settlers and Indigenous warriors.

Attending nearby Bowdoin College, Longfellow thrived in the academic environment. Although his father envisioned a law career for his precocious son, Longfellow pursued literature and studied languages. After graduation in 1825, Longfellow embarked on a three-year tour of Europe in preparation for a career in teaching at Bowdoin. Longfellow found teaching uninspiring and the students indifferent, although he published groundbreaking works on language pedagogy and startingly original translations of epic European works. Longfellow, during a second tour of Europe, endured the tragic death of his wife after a miscarriage. Grief-stricken, Longfellow returned home and accepted a professorship in languages at Harvard.

Within three years, Longfellow returned to poetry. His background in languages gave him an ear tuned to the sonic effects of rhythm and rhyme, and his poetry quickly found a devoted readership. Using the materials of American history—the legends of Indigenous Americans as well as the histories of the Puritan settlements and the colonial era—and using as backdrop the American continent itself, Longfellow, now happily remarried, became something of a cultural celebrity, his poetry read aloud by families in parlors and memorized by schoolchildren.

By 1854, his eyesight failing, Longfellow, now wealthy, retired from teaching to devote himself to his writing. His subsequent collections, of which there are more than 20, among them Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863), which contained “Paul Revere’s Ride,” were immediate bestsellers. Even as he undertook ambitious projects after the Civil War, most notably a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Longfellow, then past 60, continued writing. His poems were translated into more than 20 languages, and he was regarded in Europe as America’s de facto national poet. When Longfellow died just weeks after his 75th birthday in 1882, Congress declared a national day of mourning.

Poem Text

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 to the tower of the 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,—

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 gazed on 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 that flies 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 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 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 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 forevermore!

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.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “The Landlord’s Tale. Paul Revere’s Ride.” 1861. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem begins with a five-line prologue: The speaker addresses listeners to share the story of “the midnight ride of Paul Revere” (Line 2) on April 18, 1775, a date so far in the past, the speaker assures the audience, hardly anyone remembers.

The poem pitches immediately into the story of Paul Revere and his planned warning ride. With the independence movement taking hold, the British are determined to invade coastal Massachusetts, targeting Lexington and Concord with its store of gunpowder. The colonists must be warned. The plan is simple: Revere’s friend, a fellow patriot, will stand watch at the harbor for signs of British movement and then signal to Revere, waiting on the opposite shore of the Charles River: one lantern in the belfry of Boston’s Old North Church if the British head north by road, two if they head south along the river—circuitous, certainly, but far less obvious. Revere then rows across the harbor to wait, passing between the “huge black hulk” (Line 22) of a British man-o-war.

Revere’s friend moves through the alleys of occupied Boston and heads to the North Church. He climbs the belfry stairs, startling the pigeons, and then up the ladder to the tower. He pauses to consider the dead below in the churchyard. He snaps back. He scans the harbor and sees a “line of black” (Line 56). The British are going along the water. He hoists the signal.

Revere, “impatient to mount and ride” (Line 57), sees the two lanterns and heads out with a “hurry of hoofs” (Line 73). Feeling “the fate of a nation” (Line 78) riding on his shoulders, Revere heads toward Lexington and Concord.

Revere, alone, heads out into the Massachusetts countryside. Along the way, he alerts the darkened windows of sleeping colonists that the British are on their way. By midnight, he makes Medford (about five miles); by one o’clock in the morning, Lexington (about 15 miles); by two o’clock in the morning, he crosses the bridge into Concord itself (another six miles). The speaker soberly reminds his listeners that in Lexington and Concord slept colonists that night who the next day would face British gunfire, and who “that day would be the first to fall” (Line 108), dying for a nation that existed only in theory.

Revere’s arrival at Concord ends the speaker’s narrative. “You know the rest” (Line 111), he tells the listeners: the showdown at the Concord bridge between the British infantry and the American militia, who fought unconventionally (from behind fences and “farmyard-wall” [Line 114]) but heroically, “chasing the red coats down the lane” (Line 115) of Concord.

The speaker reminds his listeners that Revere’s midnight alarm was “a cry of defiance” (Line 122) that embodied courage at history’s “hour of darkness” (Line 127). Even now, the speaker intones, Americans can still hear the “the midnight message of Paul Revere” (Line 130).