Photo of the Week: The Midnight Ride

Posted by Adrienne on April 18, 2012 under Photos | 2 Comments to Read

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.

From Boston, Massachusetts

As Longfellow’s famous poem says, nobody is alive now who remembers Paul Revere’s late night trek to warn the Minutemen of Massachusetts about the impending arrival of British troops. But the city of Boston commemorates Revere’s ride in many places throughout the city. This statue of Revere on his horse stands near the Old North Church.

“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

Is there a better place for a statue of Paul Revere, ready to go on his important ride?

It’s not just statues, either. This painting in the State House is part of a larger mural that commemorates other Boston events at the time of the Revolutionary War. But Revere gets his very own panel that illustrates a later stanza of Longfellow’s poem:

From Boston, Massachusetts

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 for evermore!