American Minute with Bill FedererFEB. 27- ‘The fate of a nation was riding that night…’- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Listen my children and you shall hearOf the midnight ride of Paul Revere,On the 18th of April, in 75;Hardly a man is now aliveWho remembers that famous day and year.He said to his friend, ‘If the British marchBy land or sea from the town to-night,Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry archOf 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.’…
And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;…
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 redcoats 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.…
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.”
These lines are from the poem,Paul Revere’s Ride, written byHenry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was born FEBRUARY 27, 1807.
His grandfather had been a Revolutionary War general and his uncle, after whom he was named, was the Navy hero Henry Wadsworth, who was killed fighting Muslim Barbary Pirates at the Battle of Tripoli, 1804.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellowwas an American poet and Harvard Professor.
He wrote such classics as: The Song of Hiawatha; The Courtship of Miles Standish, which sold 10,000 copies in London in a single day; and Evangeline, in which he penned:
“Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice triumphs.”
The house Longfellowlived in, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, had previously been used as the Headquarters of General George Washington during the British’s Siege of Boston, July 1775-April 1776.
Longfellow’s poems imparted cultural and moral values, focusing on life being more than material pursuits.
In 1842, Longfellowexpressed his public support for abolishing slavery by publishing a collection, Poems on Slavery, which was reprinted by The New England Anti-Slavery Association.
The most popular poet of his day, Longfellowwas praised by contemporaries John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., James Russell Lowell and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In 1884, he became the first non-British writer to be represented by a sculpted bust in London’s Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.
In A Psalm of Life, 1838, Henry Wadsworth Longfellowwrote:
“Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul…In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,-act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us,
Footprints on the sands of time;-Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.”
Get the book, America’s God and Counry Encyclopedia of Quotations
Search AMERICAN MINUTE archives
Visit the American Minute archive
Read the Daily Reading at:
https://www.biblegateway.com/reading-plans/old-new-testament/today?version=NKJV
Receive the daily American Minute on your Facebook wall, Twitter feed, or RSS reader.
Please support the American Minute. Click here to make a donation. Thank you!
American Minute is a registered trademark. Permission is granted to forward. reprint or duplicate with acknowledgement tovwww.AmericanMinute.com
https://verityinstitute.org/
https://www.missiongateministry.org/home0.aspx
