Paul Revere's Ride By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Hey, guys, it's me again.

Um, it is.

I'm here to read the poem that we are going

to spend Wednesday and Thursday discussing.

So I'm gonna post a link to this reading on

the same power point.

You can go ahead and get a jump start if

you want, but we're gonna focus on this poem on

Wednesday and Thursday.

So here I go.

This one's a little bit longer.

This one is a narrative poem, which means that it

tells a story.

So we did read a narrative poem in class this

year. We read Barbara Frenchie.

If you remember from Barbara Fritchie, it told the story

of a brave woman who decided that she was gonna

stand up to the Confederate soldiers.

Andi just told a story of her day, Um, in

this in her act of heroism.

So this poem that I'm going to read Paul Revere's

Ride is also a narrative poem, and it's going to

tell the story of Paul Revere in his ride to

born people in Boston that the British were coming.

So here we go.

Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Listen, my Children and you shall hear of the midnight

ride of Paul Revere on the 18th of April and

75. Hardly a man is now alive.

Who remembers that famous day in year?

He said to his friend.

If the British march, by land or sea from the

town tonight, 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 or silently road to the Charleston shore,

Justus, the moon rose over the bay, where swinging wide

at her moorings lay the Somerset, British Man of War.

Ah, phantom ship, with each mass turns far 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 to me,

here's the muster of men at the barrack door, the

sound of arms in 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 overall.

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 sentinels tread the

watchful night wind as it went creeping along from tent

to tent and see me to whisper a swell a

moment on Lee, he feels the spell of the place

in 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, foreign 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 on the bell phrase

height, a glimmer and then a gleam of light.

He springs to the saddle, the bridal he turns but

lingers and gazes till full.

On this site, a second lamp in the Belfry burns

Ah, 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

Esteve that flies fearless in 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 Steven.

This flight Kendall 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 rods.

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 felt the damp of the

river fog that rises when the sun goes down.

It was won by the village clock.

When he galloped into Lexington, he saw the gilded weather

cock swim in the moonlight as he passed, and the

meeting house windows blank and bear gaze at him with

a spectral player, as if they already stood aghast at

the bloody work that would look upon.

It was to buy the village clock when he when

became to the bridge and conquer town, he heard the

bleeding 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 road power of year And so

through the night when his cry of alarm to every

Middlesex village and farm ah, cry of defiance and not

of fear.

Ah, voice in the darkness A knock at the door

In a word that shall echo forevermore for born 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 hoofbeats of that steed in the midnight message

of Paul Revere.

Okay, so again, you should have some context of this

poem in the meaning behind it.

I know it was long.

There are questions for you to answer related to this

poem. And this again is the poem that we're gonna

focus on for Wednesday and Thursday of this upcoming week.

So I'm gonna go ahead and post this power point

to Google Classroom right now and you guys can get

a jump start.

I will see you all tomorrow.

Paul Revere's Ride By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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