“Listen, my children, and you shall hear…….”

 “Listen, my children, and you shall hear…….”. I think that I first read or heard those words when I was about eight or nine years old. We didn’t have much when I was growing up – my Dad a lorry driver and my Mother a cotton weaver in Preston, a north Lancashire industrial town. We lived in a tiny terraced house, no hot water, no bathroom and a lavatory at the end of the back yard but despite frequent shortages of money we managed and I never really wanted for anything. In today’s terms I suppose I might be described as a deprived child but in those long gone days about 70 years ago it didn’t feel like it; my friends on the street were all in the same boat and we knew no different.

One Saturday morning – it must have been summer since I remember it as being hot with a brilliant blue sky - I was taken by my Mother and Auntie on a trip. My Dad would have been at work hence them taking me with them. We caught the bus to a small village, Longridge, just outside Preston and after a short walk arrived at a large rambling house. There were lots of people there and I soon established that a sale was going on – an auction of the house’s contents. My Mother and Auntie bought one or two bits and pieces as I remember and as we walked around the house I spotted a set of books – ten thick volumes all sitting in a polished wood frame. Taking one of the books I remember flicking through it and being entranced. Even to my young eyes I could tell from the pictures that the books were old (I later discovered that they had been printed in 1925). The ten volumes were a complete set of “Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia” and after badgering my Mother and Auntie we came away clutching them. I remember having aching arms by the time we got back home from carrying those weighty tomes.

Arthur Mee’s Encyclopaedias sat in my bedroom for the rest of my childhood and teenage years until I left home to come to College in Nottingham as a 19 year old – and boy were they well used! In many ways they were hopelessly out of date; the Encyclopaedia had been published from 1908 until 1964 (the year I left home) so my set was quite an early edition but that mattered not to me. I would lie in bed at night poring over them, learning of British and world history, geography, famous people, strange places, scientific facts, poetry, reading précis of great books by authors like Dickens and the plots of Shakespeare plays, and trying (and too often failing) to learn basic French from the “lessons” that were dotted about in the volumes.……..In short, those old books opened up my world in an age when we didn’t have a TV or few other opportunities to learn about the world beyond our little street.

And it was in one of those books that I came across “Listen, my children, and you shall hear…….” – the great poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called “Paul Revere’s Ride” telling in wonderful verse the exciting tale of Paul Revere during the American War of Independence in the late eighteenth century. I was smitten, excited, as I read and re-read it. In time I could recite it in full – and even today, in my 80th year, I can still recite sections of it.

For those unfamiliar with the poem it tells of Paul Revere a man, a messenger charged with taking news of any invading British troops arriving in the harbour or across the land to the farms and hamlets of Massachusetts. He rides through the night warning the inhabitants so that they can get their guns out to fight off the invaders and to me, a ten year old, this was the stuff of high adventure:

“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 to the tower of the church,

Up 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 gazed on 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 that flies 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 when 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, 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.

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 meadows 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 red-coats 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 forevermore!

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.”

A stirring tale, one to make those early Americans and today’s American proud. It really is the stuff of legends. All peoples and nations need stories and legends to help them make sense of the world and give a context to their lives and place in the great scheme of things. At the time Paul Revere made his ride and throughout the War there were militia men who were called “Minute Men” and these part time soldiers were ready to drop everything and at a minute’s notice defend their infant nation against the invading British Redcoats. It was to these Minute Men that Revere was riding that night and I can remember reading twenty or so years later that some of America’s ballistic missiles pointing at Russia were also called “Minute Men” – ready at a minute’s notice to defend modern America. A nice, if thought provoking touch.

But, as I think of and re-read this wonderful poem and the stirring tale that it tells, today in 2025 I can't help feeling a tinge of disappointment. America, a nation that was born out of the need and desire to throw off the yoke of occupying British forces and British rule has, for the whole of my life, seen itself, and told the world, that it is “the land of the free”, the guardian of freedom and democracy. In short, fulfilling the first “American Dream” - freedom from oppression. Indeed, many thousands of Americans have died across the world striving to fulfil that perception and that desire to bring "freedom" to others. In the American War of Independence, and I guess in the minds of the Minute Men, and, I suspect, Paul Revere there was no thought of compromise, of making “a deal” – America and the American colonists wanted freedom from what they saw as British oppression – full stop. So, it was for me a disappointment and, I think, a complete reversal of what America has always stood for, believed in and been about, when its current President treated another President and nation so poorly – being unable to support Ukraine’s valiant quest for freedom unless they were prepared to compromise, “make a deal”. And I wonder if President Trump and his charmless cronies have any sense of history, of culture, of their nation's short but meaningful and sometimes glorious narrative. It is true, the USA does not have the ancient and rich historical tapestry that many European lands have but I wonder would not Trump be stirred by such words as these to describe his country's past and beliefs: "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." I have absolutely no doubt that President Zelenskyy would understand the meaning and the feelings of those words for he sees a land, his land, "kindled into flame" every day and night in Ukraine. And what of "A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, And a word that shall echo forevermore! 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....".Sadly, America 2025 in the shape of Donald Trump does not "waken and listen to hear" - it seems that the American narrative, the march of history has been halted while "a deal" is made by a charmless and ignorant man and a group of philistines with no sense of their nation's history or long held purpose. Paul Revere (and, I would hope, many present day Americans) would, I suspect, find that unacceptable and very difficult to understand.