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This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people. Up next,

a history story and a literature story. Paul Revere's ride is a poem by the American poet Henry

Wadsworth Longfellow, and it commemorates the actions of American patriot Paul Revere on April 18th, 1775.

Longfellow was inspired to write the poem after visiting the Old North Church in Boston

and climbing its tower on April 5th, 1860.

He wrote the poem the next day, and it was published in 1861.

Here is a reading of that poem.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

On the 18th of April in 75, hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and 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 ore silently rode to the Charlestown shore, just as the moon rose over the bay, where swinging wide at

her moorings lay the Somerset, British man-of-war. A phantom ship with each mast and spar 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 him he hears the muster of men at the barrack door,

the sound of arms and the tramp of feet, and the measured tread of the grenadiers marching

...