Paul Revere's Ride

In the poem, Revere tells a friend to prepare signal lanterns in the Old North Church to inform him whether British forces will come by land or sea.

The unnamed friend climbs up the steeple and soon sets up two signal lanterns, informing Revere that the British are coming by sea.

[2] The poem served as the first in a series of 22 narratives bundled as a collection, similar to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and was published in three installments over 10 years.

Though he admitted the book made little impact,[5] it was written for his best friend, Charles Sumner, an activist abolitionist politician with whom he would continue to share common cause on the issues of slavery and the Union.

[6] The poem was meant to appeal to Northerners' sense of urgency and, as a call for action, noted that history favors the courageous.

[7] Longfellow, who often used poetry to remind readers of cultural and moral values,[8] warns at the end of the poem of a coming "hour of darkness and peril and need", implying the breakup of the Union, and suggests that the "people will waken and listen to hear" the midnight message again.

The poem fluctuates between past and present tense, sometimes in the same sentence, symbolically pulling the actions of the Revolution into modern times and displaying an event with timeless sympathies.

He had researched the historical event, using works like George Bancroft's History of the United States, but he manipulated the facts for poetic effect.

Longfellow's poem is credited with creating the national legend of Paul Revere, a previously little-known Massachusetts silversmith.

[20] Revere's elevated historical importance also led to unsubstantiated rumors that he made a set of false teeth for George Washington.