As spiderine pointed out,

[camwyn]

and as darkeros notes, there are other things to be remembered today as well. Far older things. I'm a day late on spiderine's memorializing, but not on the event that followed after, which darkeros pointed out.

*ahem* Anyway.

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.

He said to his friend, "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
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

Then he said "Good-night!" and with muffled oar
Silently rowed 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 down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!"
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer's dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black 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.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadow brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket ball.

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.

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!
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.

-Paul Revere's Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Thank you, sir.

Comments

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

My mother recites parts of that at the drop of a hat.

There's also, of course, "Listen my children and you shall whistle/ At the amazing ride of Israel Bissell."

(Bissell covered the 345 miles to Philadelphia—where the Continental Congress was meeting—in five days and six hours.)

[camwyn]

Hot damn. I know he was riding rather than running, but that boy gets a place in the Halls of Hermes alongside Pheidippides, if you ask me.

[silly-dan.livejournal.com]

Or as I called it when my Bostonian friend mentioned it, the anniversary of that war which resulted in some of my ancestors getting kicked out of Rhode Island and upstate New York. 8)

(Not that I can complain, of course -- it was a long time ago, they weren't exactly on the side of liberty and democracy, and they wouldn't have met my other ancestors otherwise, so it worked out OK.)

[camwyn]

Heh. Sorry about that. None of my ancestors were actually on this continent until a good hundred and fifty years or so after that, and I think they spent most of that time trying to kill each other anyway. Except for the Bavarians, who probably spent most of the time sort of wondering when the rest of the country was going to quit making fun of them.

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

Gods above. I had to memorize that in school, and recite it in front of the whole class. I do my best to forget it. 'Hardly a man is now alive' or a woman, either, who remembers having to memorize whole chunks of American poetry in grade school...

[camwyn]

Heh. The only poetry I can remember being forced to memorize was in Italian- Per me si va nella citta dolente, per me si va nel'eterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente etc. Unless you count Shakespeare, as I had to memorize and recite a nice chunk of several of his plays at various points in various classes.

[hugh-mannity.livejournal.com]

My ancestors were mostly in Cornwall, England, delving in tin mines, fishing and running "unofficial" import-export businesses.

I'm a first-generation immigrant which is probably why I care about this stuff.

[camwyn]

On my dad's side there were English ancestors, Catholic Ulstermen, and a couple of Scots thrown in for good measure. Not sure if there were any Welsh or if that was just a few ancestors associating with the Welsh. The Irish were farmers and the English were theatre people, so they were all pretty much as low as it's possible to get socially. The Bavarians were in Dad's ancestry, too. On Mom's side it was Italians all the way- fishermen, bricklayers, dressmakers, shoemakers, and the like, from Abruzzi and Bari.

Mom takes great pride in pointing out that the two people in the family history who illegally immigrated to the States (one by sort of moseying across the border from Canada when the family she worked for moved, and one by jumping ship from the merchant marine and entering sans papers via Mexico) were on Dad's side. Her ancestors all used the front door.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate.

If I remember correctly, it was in large part the Divina Commedia that established the Florentine dialect as the official version of Italian...

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

Per me si va nella citta dolente, per me si va nel'eterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente

Is that Petrarch or Dante? *poor benighted darling can't imagine American schoolchildren being forced to memorize anyone else in Italian*

[camwyn]

According to my Italian teacher, Sister Antoinette, it was Dante in general who nailed down the language- same way that wossname, Shakespeare, nailed down English. Although Dante went about it on purpose. Shakespeare just sort of happened and next thing you know the mad freewheeling careening rollercoaster ride that was English linguistic evolution screeched to a crawl because diversifying regionally and switching words/pronunciations out at the old rate of speed made it really frelling hard to keep up with the Shakespeare.

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

I actually stopped in Lexington on April 20th once: I didn't remember what weekend it was until I saw all the signs. :-) I just wanted to see the Museum of Our National Heritage (http://www.monh.org/)...

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Brilliant stuff.

(I can do you long stretches of Paradise Lost or any number of Shakespeare plays, and at a pinch some Homer, but I'm no good on Longfellow.

Except Hiawatha. Mm, Hiawatha.)

[camwyn]

Dante. I went to an all-girls Catholic high school and took four years of Italian as my language of choice. We had foreign-language Forensics competitions and I signed up for 'em, which meant that I had to memorize two selections from a list and deliver them aloud in front of a crowd. Since I'd just done a paper on Dante for class, I memorized the inscription over the gates of Hell. Which, I should point out, is a good twelve or sixteen lines long, not just Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate- Dante's Hell exists for a reason and that reason is posted on the gates.

I think my other poem choice was Dante sighing over Beatrice again, though in another form.

citta dolente et eterno dolore

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

OK, I recognise that's Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, and from the tone probably Canto III, Inferno, but I never had to memorise it. Nice stuff. How about: Al tempo che rinnova i miei sospiri per la dolce memoria di quel giorno... ??

And you memorised this stuff in GRADE SCHOOL? I had to do 100 lines of American poetry nearly every Friday in Grades 3-6. My long-term memory is full of the stuff...

Re: citta dolente et eterno dolore

[camwyn]

High school. Um... *thinks* grade 11 or grade 12. We had to learn poetry in English in a few of my grade school classes but I think that was only because I was in the gifted and talented program, or in Catholic school depending on which year.

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

You do know that the form of Hiawatha was taken from the Kalevala, the Finnish National Epic? Longfellow read an early translation which used the rhythm and metre of the original (DA da DA da DA da DA da -caesura - DA da DA da DA da DA da)Finnish, and closely followed it as being 'authentic', primitive, oral folk history...

Re: citta dolente et eterno dolore

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

So, did you memorise the Italian stuff in High School, in a language class? I'm impressed. Was this in Canada? How about 'la dolce memoria di quel giorno', recognise that? I didn't come into contact with it until I actually lived in Rome, then I came totally under its spell...

Re: citta dolente et eterno dolore

[camwyn]

Nah, it was at a Catholic high school in New Jersey. I didn't visit Canada until after I graduated from college. Unfortunately I was such a Dante fangirl at the time that when the opportunity came to read Petrarch I sort of skipped it.

In my own defense I did take a stab at reading Machiavelli in the original Italian, but oy, the eyeball-hurtiness of old school political Italian...

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

My parents used to suggest 'Listen my children, and close your jaws, to the midnight ride of William Dawes.'

Re: citta dolente et eterno dolore

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

LOL!!! I couldn't get through Machiavelli in ENGLISH, let alone Italian. You should have tried 'I Promessi Sposi', which has a MUCH better plot!!

Re: citta dolente et eterno dolore

[camwyn]

We read quite a few selections from that in class, actually. Nice stuff. We looked forward to the classes where we had that for reading time.

[camwyn]

In third and fourth grade, my best friend was a Queens boy named Matthew Urso. Matt could always be counted on to ruffle his fur a bit at the mention of Paul Revere in history class, because Matt was related to Dawes on his mother's side (I think). Third cousin, if I remember right. But we learned about him 'cos Mrs. Porter (third grade) and Mrs. Adelson (fourth grade) believed that the gifted children's program should use any means that came to hand for delving further into the material presented in class, and if that meant kids' relatives, so be it.

[mephron]

I can't help but wait for Camwyn to read this and suddenly get some kind of horrible smashing pain in her head from the concept of Hiawatha replacing Lemmenkainen in the Kalevala or something.

Come to think of it, I think I just got the horrible smashing pain in my own head.

[kelathefinn.livejournal.com]

LOL! Thanks a LOT. Now *I* have this horrible smashing pain in my head:
Lemminkainen looks at his lapaset and thinks: hmmm...these have the furside outside but if they had the furside inside I would have my fingers furside... ARGGGHHH..... back to marking exams....

[camwyn]

No, the horrible smashing pain came a long time ago and left enough scar tissue to render me immune to further. I played a Get of Fenris Galliard from Finland on a MUSH at one point- she was an NPC that I was using to get a plot into motion, but I put a lot of detail work into her anyway. Mielikki Timonen had very little to do with the 'grr argh we're Asatru with fangs, rendered by people who don't understand Asatru at all' Get werewolves in the main books, but took instead after as much as I could find of Finnish oral tradition and those who maintained it, whilst still being, y'know, a werewolf.

Anyway. You have not known horrible smashing Kalevala-related pain until the PCs in your sphere ask for information about a given plot point and you have to improvise a half hour's worth of authentic-sounding, English-translated Finnish High Epic Voice on the spot with only one read-through of the Kalevala to back you up.

Hiawatha doesn't stand a chance.

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

Heh. That's actually also why it was suggested in my family... or at least why it was suggested that he wrote it about Paul Revere and /not/ about William Dawes.. just doesn't sound right. (We will ignore for the moment that Paul Revere was a famous silver smith and William Dawes was not considered all that socially important... of course that's why he could pretend to be a drunk farmer and the guards let him through sooo... yeah.)

Though now I'm wondering how many people in the country know about William Dawes mostly because they are decended from him or were in a US history class with someone decended from him.

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Nope. Haven't read Hiawatha since I was very small, and haven't read the Kalevala at all. Closest I ever came to anything remotely that exotic was figuring out what "snyrtingar" meant the first time I landed in Iceland.

Oh, and rough-translating most of Tolkien's runes based on the endpapers of a very old copy of the Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy. I used them to write notes to my friends in middle school.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Samuel Prescott. Dawes never made it to Concord either - he and Revere both got caught, though Dawes later escaped. Prescott is the one who actually made it to Concord to warn the minutemen.

Though I've seen it suggested that the redcoats' real mission was not to take the armoury, but to capture Hancock and Adams, and the armoury thing was just a cover story. In which case, Revere does deserve the credit for frustrating that mission, since he was the first to reach Hancock and Adams in Lexington, and warn them to escape.

[aberrantangels]

"grr argh we're Asatru with fangs, rendered by people who don't understand Asatru at all"

Thank Father Wolf that the Uratha don't have tribes ganked that specifically from human cultures. ^_^

[mephron]

What does snyrtingar mean?

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

Toilets. Or "washrooms," I believe, more accurately.

My father and I had one hell of a good (if punchy and jetlagged) time trying to pronounce "snyrtingar" at one another.