On a shadowy something far away, Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Now gazed on the landscape far and near, And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height, A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. He heard the crowing of the cock, And the barking of the farmer's dog, That rises after the sun goes down. It was one by the village clock 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. And the twitter of birds among the trees, have read You know the rest. In the books you So through the night rode Paul Revere; A cry of defiance, and not of fear, A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, In the hour of darkness and peril and need, HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON, APRIL 17, 1775. Their death-shot shook the feudal tower, That fateful echo is not dumb; The nations, listening to its sound, The bridal-time of Law and Love, The gladness of the world's release, * Berserk, or Bar-sark, Icelandic name for "careless bravo or freebooter." The golden age of brotherhood When closer strand shall lean to strand, The eagle of our mountain crags, JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. THE REVOLUTIONARY ALARM. DARKNESS closed upon the country and upon the town, but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of horses transmitted the war-message from hand to hand, till village repeated it to village; the sea to the backwoods; the plains to the highlands; and it was never suffered to droop till it had been borne North, and South, and East, and West, throughout the land. It spread over the bays that receive the Saco and the Penobscot. Its loud reveille broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and, ringing like bugle-notes from peak to peak, overleapt the Green Mountains, swept onward to Montreal, and descended the ocean river, till the responses were echoed from the cliffs of Quebec. The hills along the Hudson told to one another the tale. As the summons hurried to the South, it was one day at New York; in one more at Philadelphia; the next it lighted a watchfire at Baltimore; thence it waked an answer at Annapolis. Crossing the Potomac near Mount Vernon, it was sent forward without a halt to Williamsburg. It traversed the Dismal Swamp to Nansemond, along the route of the first emigrants to North Carolina. It moved onwards and still onwards, through boundless groves of evergreen, to New-Berne and to Wilmington. "For God's sake, forward it by night and by day," wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border and despatched it to Charleston, and through pines and palmettos and moss-clad live-oaks, farther to the South, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond Savannah. The Blue Ridge took up the voice, and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers, that the "loud call" might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga, and the French Broad. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky; so that hunters who made their halt in the matchless valley of the Elkhorn commemorated the 19th day of April, 1776, by naming their encampment Lexington. With one impulse the colonies sprung to arms; with one spirit they pledged themselves to each other "to be ready for the extreme event." With one heart the continent cried, "LIBERTY OR DEATH!" GEORGE BANCROFT. THE RISING IN 1776. OUT of the North the wild news came, And there was tumult in the air, The fife's shrill note, the drum's loud beat, |