Note 54 — XV. THE MIDNIGHT RIDE.
Reading edition
In the Tales of a Wayside Inn, the poet Longfellow represents Paul Revere as impatiently waiting beside his horse, on the Charlestown shore, for the signal lights:—
“On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse’s side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly 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 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!”
From the narrative of Paul Revere in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society, we learn that the signals were seen before he reached the Charlestown shore:—
“When I got into town, I met Colonel Conant and several others; they said they had seen our signals; I told them what was acting, and I went to get me a horse; I got a horse of Deacon Larkin. While the horse was preparing, Richard Devens, Esq., who was one of the Committee of Safety, came to me and told me that he came down the road from Lexington after sundown, that evening; that he met ten British officers, all well mounted and armed, going up the road.”