Paul Revere’s Ride in Context
By Adam Andrews
When our kids were little, Missy and I used to read them Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem about Paul Revere. It’s a great poem—a classic by any definition. We particularly like how the poem’s imagery takes us back in time, and we imagine ourselves in the Boston hinterland on the 18th of April, 1775, as Paul Revere rides out to warn his countrymen of the British threat. Even the rhythm of the piece recalls a galloping horse:
LISTen my CHILDren and YOU shall HEAR
Of the MIDnight RIDE of PAUL reVERE.
In all the years that I read it to my children, I had never thought to ask them what Longfellow’s poem was about. It went without saying, I suppose. It’s about the American Revolution, of course. It’s about the famed Minutemen of Massachusetts and their heroic battle with the British at Old North Bridge in Concord.
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year . . .
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 . . .
But in larger sense, the poem is also about the American spirit. It’s about how Americans won’t stand for slavery and how they fight against any and all threats to their liberties. Longfellow urges his readers to adopt the Minutemen’s attitude toward oppression and tyranny: (more…)