\n“Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows,
\nwhich the world knows not; and oftimes
\nwe call a man cold, when he is only sad.”<\/p>\n
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<\/p>\n
Words to live by, as far as I’m concerned.<\/p>\n
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow<\/a> was born today in 1807 in Portland, Maine. He was one of those rare things: a poet famous during his own lifetime. A bit of a celebrity he was. I have his collected works at home. “Evangeline” and “Song of Hiawatha” are often the ones that are excerpted, or included in larger anthologies of American verse. But his “Paul Revere’s Ride” is my favorite. I have written about it quite a bit. The first stanza gives me goosebumps. Always. Here it is – I never “get over” this poem.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \nPart of the reason I love this poem is because of the story, of course – but there’s also something thrilling in Longfellow’s language, his perfect rhythm, his immaculate rhyme scheme. It has a ring of inevitability to it. It’s meant to be read out loud. When you do, you can hear the galloping horse hooves in<\/i> the rhythm.<\/p>\n Paul Revere’s Ride<\/b><\/p>\n Listen my children and you shall hear Then he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oar Meanwhile, his friend through alley and street Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, A hurry of hoofs in a village street, It was twelve by the village clock It was one by the village clock, It was two by the village clock, You know the rest. In the books you have read So through the night rode Paul Revere; \nSO SATISFYING. “It was one by the village clock …” “It was two by the village clock …” “For borne on the night-wind of the Past …” Ringingly satisfying.<\/p>\n The O’Malley family has passed on the love of that poem to the next generation. Here’s something I wrote about Cashel, and Longfellow’s poem that I read on a radio program here in New York a couple years ago. Cashel was 5 years old at the time. It seems to me it would be quite a fitting tribute to one of the most popular American poets we’ve ever had.<\/p>\n \nOne If By Land<\/b><\/p>\n Cashel and I colored for a while as we waited for the pizza to arrive. Cashel commanded me to draw a house. So I did. Cashel was basically the architect and the interior designer. Telling me what he wanted to see.<\/p>\n “Put a playroom in the attic.”<\/p>\n “But Auntie Sheila — where are the stairs??”<\/p>\n I drew the bathroom, and the mere sight of the toilet caused Cashel to dissolve into mirth. Yes. Toilets are hilarious.<\/p>\n I drew a spiral staircase which blew Cashel away. “That’s so COOL.” Then I drew the living room. I said, “I think there needs to be a picture on the wall. Or a portrait. Whose picture should be on the wall, you think?”<\/p>\n Cashel said bluntly, “Einstein.”<\/p>\n Okay, then. Einstein. So I drew this little cartoon of Einstein, with the crazy hair coming up, and Cashel said seriously, with all of his knowledge, “That really looks like Einstein.”<\/p>\n We ate our pizza together, talking about stuff. Star Wars, Ben Franklin. Cashel informed me, “Ben Franklin discovered lightning.”<\/p>\n Cashel is a wealth of information. Randomly, he told my parents that Vincent Van Gogh never sold a painting while he was alive, but that after he died, he became famous.<\/p>\n I read him a story. It was from the book of “Disney stories” which I had given him for his birthday. He loves it. He pulled it out of the bookshelf, and I said, “Oh! I gave that to you!” Cashel said, a little bit annoyed, “I know that.”<\/p>\n He had me read the story of the little mouse who hung out with Ben Franklin, and basically (in the world of Disney) was the inspiration for all of Ben Franklin’s famous moments. Cashel would shoot questions at me. “Why is Ben Franklin’s hair white?” “Well … he’s old now. But also, in those days, men wore powdered wigs. I think.” Cashel’s little serious face, listening, sponging this all up. Probably the next day he informed his friends that men in the olden days wore powdered wigs. He’s that kind of listener, that kind of learner.<\/p>\n Then he put on his Obi Wan Kenobi costume which Grandma Peggy made him for Christmas. A long hooded brown cloak … and he hooked his light saber into his waist, and galloped off down the hall. Making me laugh. A mini Jedi knight.<\/p>\n I had him pick out three stories to read before bedtime. He sat beside me, curled up into me, looking at the pictures as I read to him. The last one we read was Longfellow’s poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”. This poem was a favorite of ours, when we were kids. My dad would read it to us, and even now, when I read the words, I hear them in my father’s voice. A magical poem. Really. The way my dad read it to us (along with Longfellow’s help) made us SEE it. The clock tower, the moon, the darkness … the sense of anticipation, of secrecy, of urgency. It was thrilling. So I love that this is being passed on to Cashel! I’ve never read the poem outloud before … so I had one of those strange moments of the space-time continuum bending … me stepping into my father’s shoes, Cashel 5 years old beside me, feeling the ghost of my own 5 year old self listening.<\/p>\n I also remember how Brendan and I used to chime in gleefully: “ONE IF BY LAND, TWO IF BY SEA!” And Cashel did the same thing. I paused before that moment in the poem, glanced down at him, and he screamed it out.<\/p>\n There was also a subtlety of understanding in Cashel … I read this section:<\/p>\n And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height And Cashel exclaimed, in a sort of “Uh-oh” tone, “They’re comin’ by sea!!” Now the words don’t actually SAY that, but he remembered the “one if by land two if by sea” signal, and puts it all together. That’s my boy!<\/p>\n I remembered the first lines from memory:<\/p>\n Listen my children and you shall hear Again, those are just words on the page. But to me, they are filled with the echoes of my father’s voice. I have tears in my eyes.<\/p>\n Cashel and I, as we went through the poem, had to stop many times for discussions.<\/p>\n There was one illustration of all the minute-men, hiding behind the stone walls, with a troop of Redcoats marching along, walking straight into the ambush. Cashel pointed at it, and stated firmly, “That’s the civil war.”<\/p>\n “Nope. Nope. That is actually a picture from the American Revolutionary War.”<\/p>\n Cashel pondered this. Taking it in. Then: “The minute-men were in the civil war.” But less certain.<\/p>\n “Nope. The minute-men were soldiers in the American Revolution. Do you know why they called them that?”<\/p>\n “Why?”<\/p>\n “Cause they were just farmers, and regular people … but they could be ready to go into battle in a minute.”<\/p>\n Again, a long silence. As Cashel filed this away for safekeeping. He forgets nothing.<\/p>\n “So … Auntie Sheila … what is the difference between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War?”<\/p>\n Woah. Okay. This will be a test. How to describe all of that in 5-year-old language. I mean, frankly, Cashel is not like a five-year-old at all. But still. Everything must be boiled down into its simplest components.<\/p>\n “Well. America used to be a part of England, and the American Revolutionary War was when America decided that it wanted to be free … and Americans basically told the Brits to go home.” Uh-oh. Brits? This is an inflammatory term. I corrected myself. “America told Great Britain that it wanted to be its own country. And the Civil War … ” Hmmm. How to begin … what to say … I know it was about more than slavery, but I decided to only focus on that one aspect. Economic theory would be too abstract. “In those days, Cashel, black people were slaves. And it was very very wrong. Can you understand that?”<\/p>\n He nodded. His little serious face.<\/p>\n “And the people in the South wanted to keep their slaves, and the people in the North said to the people in the South that they had to give up their slaves because it was wrong. And they ended up going to war. And eventually all the slaves were free.”<\/p>\n Cashel accepted this explanation silently. Then he pointed back to the Paul Revere poem. “Read.” he commanded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Words to live by, as far as I’m concerned. Henry Wadsworth … Continue reading
\nOf the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
\nOn the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
\nHardly a man is now alive
\nWho remembers that famous day and year.
\nHe said to his friend, “If the British march
\nBy land or sea from the town to-night,
\nHang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
\nOf the North Church tower as a signal light,–
\nOne if by land, and two if by sea;
\nAnd I on the opposite shore will be,
\nReady to ride and spread the alarm
\nThrough every Middlesex village and farm,
\nFor the country folk to be up and to arm.”<\/p>\n
\nSilently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
\nJust as the moon rose over the bay,
\nWhere swinging wide at her moorings lay
\nThe Somerset, British man-of-war;
\nA phantom ship, with each mast and spar
\nAcross the moon like a prison bar,
\nAnd a huge black hulk, that was magnified
\nBy its own reflection in the tide.<\/p>\n
\nWanders and watches, with eager ears,
\nTill in the silence around him he hears
\nThe muster of men at the barrack door,
\nThe sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
\nAnd the measured tread of the grenadiers,
\nMarching down to their boats on the shore.<\/p>\n
\nBy the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
\nTo the belfry chamber overhead,
\nAnd startled the pigeons from their perch
\nOn the sombre rafters, that round him made
\nMasses and moving shapes of shade,–
\nBy the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
\nTo the highest window in the wall,
\nWhere he paused to listen and look down
\nA moment on the roofs of the town
\nAnd the moonlight flowing over all.<\/p>\n
\nIn their night encampment on the hill,
\nWrapped in silence so deep and still
\nThat he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
\nThe watchful night-wind, as it went
\nCreeping along from tent to tent,
\nAnd seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
\nA moment only he feels the spell
\nOf the place and the hour, and the secret dread
\nOf the lonely belfry and the dead;
\nFor suddenly all his thoughts are bent
\nOn a shadowy something far away,
\nWhere the river widens to meet the bay,–
\nA line of black that bends and floats
\nOn the rising tide like a bridge of boats.<\/p>\n
\nBooted and spurred, with a heavy stride
\nOn the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
\nNow he patted his horse’s side,
\nNow he gazed at the landscape far and near,
\nThen, impetuous, stamped the earth,
\nAnd turned and tightened his saddle girth;
\nBut mostly he watched with eager search
\nThe belfry tower of the Old North Church,
\nAs it rose above the graves on the hill,
\nLonely and spectral and sombre and still.
\nAnd lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
\nA glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
\nHe springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
\nBut lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
\nA second lamp in the belfry burns.<\/p>\n
\nA shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
\nAnd beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
\nStruck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
\nThat was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
\nThe fate of a nation was riding that night;
\nAnd the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
\nKindled the land into flame with its heat.
\nHe has left the village and mounted the steep,
\nAnd beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
\nIs the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
\nAnd under the alders that skirt its edge,
\nNow soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
\nIs heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.<\/p>\n
\nWhen he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
\nHe heard the crowing of the cock,
\nAnd the barking of the farmer’s dog,
\nAnd felt the damp of the river fog,
\nThat rises after the sun goes down.<\/p>\n
\nWhen he galloped into Lexington.
\nHe saw the gilded weathercock
\nSwim in the moonlight as he passed,
\nAnd the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
\nGaze at him with a spectral glare,
\nAs if they already stood aghast
\nAt the bloody work they would look upon.<\/p>\n
\nWhen he came to the bridge in Concord town.
\nHe heard the bleating of the flock,
\nAnd the twitter of birds among the trees,
\nAnd felt the breath of the morning breeze
\nBlowing over the meadow brown.
\nAnd one was safe and asleep in his bed
\nWho at the bridge would be first to fall,
\nWho that day would be lying dead,
\nPierced by a British musket ball.<\/p>\n
\nHow the British Regulars fired and fled,—
\nHow the farmers gave them ball for ball,
\nFrom behind each fence and farmyard wall,
\nChasing the redcoats down the lane,
\nThen crossing the fields to emerge again
\nUnder the trees at the turn of the road,
\nAnd only pausing to fire and load.<\/p>\n
\nAnd so through the night went his cry of alarm
\nTo every Middlesex village and farm,—
\nA cry of defiance, and not of fear,
\nA voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
\nAnd a word that shall echo for evermore!
\nFor, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
\nThrough all our history, to the last,
\nIn the hour of darkness and peril and need,
\nThe people will waken and listen to hear
\nThe hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
\nAnd the midnight message of Paul Revere.<\/p>\n
\nA glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
\nHe springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
\nBut lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
\nA second lamp in the belfry burns.<\/p>\n
\nOf the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
\nOn the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
\nHardly a man is now alive
\nWho remembers that famous day and year.<\/p>\n