Graded Memory Selections

THE SANDPIPER AND I.10

Across the lonely beach we flit,One little sandpiper and I,And fast I gather, bit by bit,The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.The wild waves reach their hands for it,The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,As up and down the beach we flit,One little sandpiper and I.I watch him as he skims along,Uttering his sweet and mournful cry;He starts not at my fitful song,Nor flash of fluttering drapery.He has no thought of any wrong,He scans me with a fearless eye;Stanch friends are we, well-tried and strong,The little sandpiper and I.Comrade, where wilt thou be to-night,When the loosed storm breaks furiously?My driftwood fire will burn so bright!To what warm shelter can’st thou fly?I do not fear for thee, though wrothThe tempest rushes through the sky;For are we not God’s children, both,Thou, little sandpiper, and I?—Celia Thaxter.

IN SCHOOL DAYS.11

Still sits the school-house by the road,A ragged beggar sleeping;Around it still the sumachs growAnd blackberry vines are creeping.Within, the master’s desk is seen,Deep-scarred by raps official;The warping floor, the battered seats,The jack-knife’s carved initial.The charcoal frescoes on the wall,Its door’s worn sill, betrayingThe feet that, creeping slow to school,Went storming out to playing.Long years ago a winter’s sunShone over it at setting;Lit up its western window-panes,And low eaves’ icy fretting.It touched the tangled golden curls,And brown eyes full of grievingOf one who still her steps delayed,When all the school were leaving.For near her stood the little boyHer childish favor singled;His cap pulled low upon his faceWhere pride and shame were mingled.Pushing with restless feet the snowTo right, to left, he lingered—As restlessly her tiny handsThe blue-checked apron fingered.He saw her lift her eyes; he feltThe soft hand’s light caressing,And heard the tremble of her voice,As if a fault confessing.“I’m sorry that I spelt the word,I hate to go above you,Because”—the brown eyes lower fell—“Because, you see, I love you.”Still memory to a gray-haired manThat sweet child-face is showing.Dear girl! the grasses on her graveHave forty years been growing.He lives to learn in life’s hard schoolHow few who pass above himLament their triumph and his loss,Like her—because they love him.—Whittier.

TAKE CARE

Little children, you must seekRather to be good than wise,For the thoughts you do not speakShine out in your cheeks and eyes.If you think that you can beCross and cruel and look fair,Let me tell you how to seeYou are quite mistaken there.Go and stand before the glass,And some ugly thought contrive,And my word will come to passJust as sure as you’re alive!What you have and what you lack,All the same as what you wear,You will see reflected back;So, my little folks, take care!And not only in the glassWill your secrets come to view;All beholders, as they pass,Will perceive and know them, too.Goodness shows in blushes bright,Or in eyelids dropping down,Like a violet from the light;Badness in a sneer or frown.Out of sight, my boys and girls,Every root of beauty starts;So think less about your curls,More about your minds and hearts.Cherish what is good, and driveEvil thoughts and feelings far;For, as sure as you’re alive,You will show for what you are.—Alice Cary.

A LIFE LESSON.12

There! little girl; don’t cry!They have broken your doll, I know;And your tea-set blue,And your play-house, too,Are things of the long ago;But childish troubles will soon pass by.There! little girl; don’t cry!There! little girl; don’t cry!They have broken your slate, I know;And the glad wild waysOf your school-girl daysAre things of the long ago;But life and love will soon come by.There! little girl; don’t cry!There! little girl; don’t cry!They have broken your heart, I know;And the rainbow gleamsOf your youthful dreamsAre things of the long ago;But heaven holds all for which you sigh.There! little girl; don’t cry!—James Whitcomb Riley.

FIFTH GRADE

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH

Under a spreading chestnut-treeThe village smithy stands;The smith, a mighty man is he,With large and sinewy hands;And the muscles of his brawny armsAre strong as iron bands.His hair is crisp, and black, and long;His face is like the tan;His brow is wet with honest sweat;He earns whate’er he can,And looks the whole world in the face,For he owes not any man.Week in, week out, from morn to night,You can hear his bellows blow;You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,With measured beat and slow,Like a sexton ringing the village bellWhen the evening sun is low.And children, coming home from school,Look in at the open door;They love to see the flaming forge,And hear the bellows roar,And catch the burning sparks that flyLike chaff from a threshing-floor.He goes on Sunday to the church,And sits among his boys;He hears the parson pray and preach,He hears his daughter’s voiceSinging in the village choir,And it makes his heart rejoice.It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,Singing in Paradise!He needs must think of her once more—How in the grave she lies;And, with his hard, rough hand, he wipesA tear out of his eyes.Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,Onward through life he goes;Each morning sees some task begin,Each evening sees its close;Something attempted, something done,Has earned a night’s repose.Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,For the lesson thou hast taught!Thus at the flaming forge of life,Our fortunes must be wrought;Thus, on its sounding anvil, shapedEach burning deed and thought!—Longfellow.

LOVE OF COUNTRY

Breathes there a man with soul so dead,Who never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land!Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,From wandering on a foreign strand!If such there breathe, go, mark him well;For him no Minstrel raptures swell;High though his titles, proud his name,Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;Despite those titles, power, and pelf,The wretch, concenter’d all in self,Living, shall forfeit fair renown,And doubly dying, shall go downTo the vile dust, from whence he sprung,Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.—Scott.

THE DAFFODILS

I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.The waves beside them danced; but theyOutdid the sparkling waves in glee:A poet could not but be gay,In such a jocund company:I gazed—and gazed—but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.—Wordsworth.

A CHILD’S THOUGHT OF GOD

They say that God lives very high:But if you look above the pinesYou cannot see God. And why?And if you dig down in the minesYou never see him in the gold,Though, from him, all that’s glory shines.God is so good, he wears a foldOf heaven and earth across his face—Like secrets kept for love untold.But still I feel that his embraceSlides down by thrills, through all things made,Through sight and sound of every place:As if my tender mother laidOn my shut lids her kisses’ pressure,Half waking me at night; and said,“Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?”—Mrs. Browning.

FROM MY ARM-CHAIR.13

Am I a king that I should call my ownThis splendid ebon throne?Or by what reason or what right divine,Can I proclaim it mine?Only, perhaps, by right divine of songIt may to me belong:Only because the spreading chestnut treeOf old was sung by me.Well I remember it in all its prime,When in the summer timeThe affluent foliage of its branches madeA cavern of cool shade.There by the blacksmith’s forge, beside the street,Its blossoms white and sweetEnticed the bees, until it seemed alive,And murmured like a hive.And when the winds of autumn, with a shout,Tossed its great arms about,The shining chestnuts, bursting from the sheath,Dropped to the ground beneath.And now some fragments of its branches bare,Shaped as a stately chair,Have, by a hearth-stone found a home at last,And whisper of the past.The Danish king could not in all his prideRepel the ocean tide.But, seated in this chair,I can in rhymeRoll back the tide of time.I see again, as one in vision sees,The blossoms and the bees,And hear the children’s voices call,And the brown chestnuts fall.I see the smithy with its fires aglow,I hear the bellows blow,And the shrill hammers on the anvil beatThe iron white with heat.And thus, dear children, have ye made for meThis day a jubilee,And to my more than three-score years and tenBrought back my youth again.The heart hath its own memory, like the mindAnd in it are enshrinedThe precious keepsakes, into which is wroughtThe giver’s loving thought.Only your love and your remembrance couldGive life to this dead wood,And make these branches, leafless now so long,Blossom again in song.—Longfellow.

A SONG OF EASTER.14

Sing, children, sing,And the lily censers swing;Sing that life and joy are waking and thatDeath no more is king.Sing the happy, happy tumult of the slowly bright’ning Spring;Sing, little children, sing,Sing, children, sing,Winter wild has taken wing.Fill the air with the sweet tidings till the frosty echoes ring.Along the eaves, the icicles no longer cling;And the crocus in the garden lifts its bright face to the sun;And in the meadow, softly the brooks begin to run;And the golden catkins, swingIn the warm air of the Spring—Sing, little children, sing.Sing, children, sing,The lilies white you bringIn the joyous Easter morning, for hopes are blossoming,And as earth her shroud of snow from off her breast doth fling,So may we cast our fetters off in God’s eternal Spring;So may we find release at last from sorrow and from pain,Soon may we find our childhood’s calm, delicious dawn again.Sweet are your eyes, O little ones, that look with smiling grace,Without a shade of doubt or fear into the future’s face.Sing, sing in happy chorus, with happy voices tellThat death is life, and God is good, and all things shall be well.That bitter day shall ceaseIn warmth and light and peace,That winter yields to Spring—Sing, little children, sing.—Celia Thaxter.

THE JOY OF THE HILLS.15

I ride on the mountain tops, I ride;I have found my life and am satisfied.Onward I ride in the blowing oats,Checking the field lark’s rippling notes—Lightly I sweep from steep to steep;O’er my head through branches highCome glimpses of deep blue sky;The tall oats brush my horse’s flanks:Wild poppies crowd on the sunny banks;A bee booms out of the scented grass;A jay laughs with me as I pass.I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forgetLife’s hoard of regret—All the terror and pain of a chafing chain.Grind on, O cities, grind! I leave you a blur behind.I am lifted elate—the skies expand;Here the world’s heaped gold is a pile of sand.Let them weary and work in their narrow walls;I ride with the voices of waterfalls.I swing on as one in a dream—I swing.Down the very hollows, I shout, I sing.The world is gone like an empty word;My body’s a bough in the wind,—my heart a bird.—Edwin Markham.

IN BLOSSOM TIME

Its O my heart, my heart,To be out in the sun and sing,To sing and shout in the fields about,In the balm and blossoming.Sing loud, O bird in the tree;O bird, sing loud in the sky,And honey-bees, blacken the clover-beds;There are none of you as glad as I.The leaves laugh low in the wind,Laugh low with the wind at play;And the odorous call of the flowers allEntices my soul away.For oh, but the world is fair, is fair,And oh, but the world is sweet;I will out in the old of the blossoming mould,And sit at the Master’s feet.And the love my heart would speak,I will fold in the lily’s rim,That the lips of the blossom more pure and meekMay offer it up to Him.Then sing in the hedgerow green, O thrush,O skylark, sing in the blue;Sing loud, sing clear, that the King may hear,And my soul shall sing with you.—Ina Coolbrith.

THE STARS AND THE FLOWERS.16

Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,When he called the flowers so blue and goldenStars that in earth’s firmament do shine.Stars they are wherein we read our history,As astrologers and seers of eld;Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery,Like the burning stars that they beheld.Wondrous truths and manifold as wondrous,God hath written in those stars above;But not less in the bright flowerets under usStands the revelation of His love.Bright and glorious is that revelation,Written all over this great world of oursMaking evident our own creation,In these stars of earth, these golden flowers.And the poet, faithful and far-seeing,Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a partOf the selfsame universal Being,Which is throbbing in his brain and heart.Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining;Buds that open only to decay;Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues,Flaunting gaily in the golden light;Large desires with most uncertain issues,Tender wishes blossoming at night.These in flowers and men are more than seeming,Workings are they of the selfsame powers,Which the poet, in no idle dreaming,Seeth in himself and in the flowers.Everywhere about us are they glowing,Some like stars to tell us Spring is born:Others, their blue eyes with tears o’erflowing,Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn.Not alone in Spring’s armorial bearing,And in summer’s green-emblazoned field,But in arms of brave old Autumn’s wearing,In the center of his blazoned shield.Not alone in meadows and green alleysOn the mountaintop and by the brinkOf sequestered pool in woodland valleys,Where the slaves of nature stoop to drink;Not alone in her vast dome of glory,Not on graves of birds or beasts alone,But in old cathedrals, high and hoary,On the tombs of heroes carved in stone;In the cottage of the rudest peasant,In ancestral homes whose crumbling towers,Speaking of the Past unto the Present,Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers.In all places, then, and in all seasons,Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings;Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,How akin they are to human things.And with childlike, credulous affectionWe behold their tender buds expand;Emblems of our own great resurrection,Emblems of the bright and better land.—Longfellow

MEADOW-LARKS

Sweet, sweet, sweet! Oh, happy that I am!(Listen to the meadow-larks, across the fields that sing!)Sweet, sweet, sweet! O subtle breath of balm,O winds that blow, O buds that grow, O rapture of the spring!Sweet, sweet, sweet! O skies, serene and blue,That shut the velvet pastures in, that fold the mountain’s crest!Sweet, sweet, sweet! What of the clouds ye knew?The vessels ride a golden tide, upon a sea at rest.Sweet, sweet, sweet! Who prates of care and pain?Who says that life is sorrowful? O life so glad, so fleet!Ah! he who lives the noblest life finds life the noblest gain,The tears of pain a tender rain to make its waters sweet.Sweet, sweet, sweet! O happy world that is!Dear heart, I hear across the fields my mateling pipe and callSweet, sweet, sweet! O world so full of bliss,For life is love, the world is love, and love is over all!—Ina Coolbrith.

THE ARROW AND THE SONG

I shot an arrow into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For, so swiftly it flew, the sightCould not follow it in its flight.I breathed a song into the air,It fell to earth, I knew not where;For who has sight so keen and strong,That it can follow the flight of song?Long, long afterward, in an oakI found the arrow, still unbroke;And the song, from beginning to end,I found again in the heart of a friend.—Longfellow.

THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF AGASSIZ.17

It was fifty years ago,In the pleasant month of May,In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,A child in its cradle lay.And Nature, the old nurse, tookThe child upon her knee,Saying: “Here is a story-bookThy Father has written for thee.”“Come, wander with me,” she said,“Into regions yet untrod;And read what is still unreadIn the manuscripts of God.”And he wandered away and awayWith Nature, the dear old nurse,Who sang to him night and dayThe rhymes of the universe.And whenever the way seemed long,Or his heart began to fail,She would sing a more wonderful song,Or tell a more marvelous tale.So she keeps him still a child,And will not let him go,Though at times his heart beats wildFor the beautiful Pays de Vaud;Though at times he hears in his dreamsThe Ranz des Vaches of old,And the rush of mountain streamsFrom glaciers clear and cold;And the mother at home says, “Hark!For his voice I listen and yearn;It is growing late and dark,And my boy does not return!”—Longfellow.

SIXTH GRADE

BREAK, BREAK, BREAK

Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utterThe thoughts that arise in me.Oh, well for the fisherman’s boy,That he shouts with his sister at play!Oh, well for the sailor lad,That he sings in his boat on the bay!And the stately ships go onTo their haven under the hill;But oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,And the sound of a voice that is still!Break, break, break,At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.—Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

COLUMBUS—WESTWARD.18

Behind him lay the gray Azores,Behind the Gates of Hercules;Before him not the ghost of shores,Before him only shoreless seas.The good mate said: “Now we must pray,For lo, the very stars are gone.Brave Adm’r’l speak; what shall I say?”“Why say: ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on!’”“My men grow mutinous day by day;My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”The stout mate thought of home; a sprayOf salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.“What shall I say, brave Adm’r’l, say,If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”“Why you shall say at break of day:‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! sail on!’”They sailed and sailed, as the winds might blow,Until at last the blanched mate said:“Why, not even God would knowShould I and all my men fall dead.These very winds forget their way,For God from these dread seas is gone.Now speak, brave Adm’r’l; speak and say”—He said: “Sail on! sail on! sail on!”They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:“This mad sea shows its teeth to-night.He curls his lips, he lies in wait,With lifted teeth, as if to bite!Brave Adm’r’l, say but one good word;What shall we do when hope is gone?”The words leapt as a leaping sword:“Sail on! sail on! sail on! sail on!”Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,And peered through darkness. Ah, that nightOf all dark nights! And then a speck—A light! A light! A light! A light!It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.He gained a world; he gave that worldIts grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”—Joaquin Miller.

THE DAY IS DONE

The day is done, and the darknessFalls from the wings of Night,As a feather is wafted downwardFrom an eagle in his flight.I see the lights of the villageGleam through the rain and the mist,And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me,That my soul cannot resist:A feeling of sadness and longing,That is not akin to pain,And resembles sorrow onlyAs the mist resembles the rain.Come, read to me some poem,Some simple and heartfelt lay,That shall soothe this restless feeling,And banish the thoughts of day.Not from the grand old masters,Not from the bards19 sublime,Whose distant footsteps echoThrough the corridors of Time.For, like strains of martial music,Their mighty thoughts suggestLife’s endless toil and endeavor;And to-night I long for rest.Read from some humbler poet,Whose songs gushed from his heart,As showers from the clouds of summer,Or tears from the eyelids start;Who, through long days of labor;And nights devoid of ease,Still heard in his soul the musicOf wonderful melodies.Such songs have power to quietThe restless pulse of care,And come like the benediction20That follows after prayer.Then read from the treasured volumeThe poem of thy choice,And lend to the rhyme of the poetThe beauty of thy voice.And the night shall be filled with music,And the cares that infest the day,Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,And as silently steal away.—Longfellow.

THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS

The breaking waves dashed high on a stern and rock-bound coast,And the woods against a stormy sky their giant branches tossed;And the heavy night hung dark the hills and waters o’er,When a band of exiles moored their bark on the wild New England shore.Not as the conqueror comes, they the true-hearted, came;Not with the roll of stirring drums, and the trumpet that sings of fame;Not as the flying come, in silence and in fear;They shook the depths of the desert gloom with their hymns of lofty cheer.Amidst the storm they sang, and the stars heard, and the sea;And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang with the anthems of the free!The ocean eagle soared from his nest by the white wave’s foam,And the rocking pines of the forest roared—this was their welcome home!There were men with hoary hair amidst that pilgrim band;Why had they come to wither there away from their childhood’s land?There was woman’s fearless eye, lit by her deep love’s truth;There was manhood’s brow serenely high, and the fiery heart of youth.What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine?The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a faith’s pure shrine!Ay, call it holy ground, the soil where first they trod:They left unstained, what there they found, Freedom to worship God.—Mrs. Hemans.

HE PRAYETH BEST

“He prayeth best, who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the dear God who loveth us,He made and loveth all.”—Coleridge.

EACH AND ALL

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,Of thee from the hilltop looking down;The heifer that lows in the upland farm,Far heard, lows not thine ear to charm,The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,Deems not that great NapoleonStops his horse, and lists with delight,Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbor’s creed has lent.All are needed by each one;Nothing is fair or good alone.I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven,Singing at dawn on the alder bough;I brought him home, in his nest, at even,He sings the song, but it cheers not now,For I did not bring the river and sky;He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye.The delicate shells lay on the shore;The bubbles of the latest waveFresh pearls to their enamel gave,And the bellowing of the savage seaGreeted their safe escape to me.I wiped away the weeds and foam,I fetched my sea-born treasures home;But the poor, unsightly, noisome thingsHad left their beauty on the shoreWith the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.The lover watched his graceful maid,As mid the virgin train she strayed,Nor knew her beauty’s best attireWas woven still by the snow-white quire.At last she came to his hermitage,Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage;The gay enchantment was undone,A gentle wife, but fairy none.When I said, “I covet truth;Beauty is unripe childhood’s cheat;I leave it behind with the games of youth.”As I spoke, beneath my feetThe ground pine curled its pretty leaf,Running over the club-moss burrs;I inhaled the violet’s breath;Around me stood the oaks and firs,Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground.Over me soared the eternal sky,Full of light and of deity;Again I saw, again I heard,The rolling river, the morning bird;Beauty through my senses stole:I yielded myself to the perfect whole.—Emerson.

PAUL REVERE’S RIDE

Listen, my children, and you shall hearOf the midnight ride of Paul Revere.On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-five;Hardly a man is now aliveWho remembers that famous day and year.He said to his friend, “If the British marchBy land or sea from the town21 to-night,Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry archOf the North Church tower as a signal light—One if by land, and two if by sea,And I on the opposite shore22 will be,Ready to ride and spread the alarmThrough every Middlesex village and farm,For the country folk to be up and to arm.”Then he said “Good-night!” and with muffled oarSilently rowed to the Charlestown shore,Just as the moon rose over the bay,Where swinging wide at her moorings layThe Somerset, British man-of-war;A phantom ship, with each mast and sparAcross the moon like a prison bar,And a huge black hulk that was magnifiedBy 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 hearsThe muster of men at the barrack door,The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,And the measured tread of the grenadiers23Marching 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 madeMasses and moving shapes of shade—Up the light ladder, slender and tall,To the highest window in the wall,Where he paused to listen and look downA moment on the roofs of the town,And the moonlight flowing over all.Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,Booted and spurred, with a heavy strideOn the opposite shore walked Paul RevereNow 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 he watched with eager searchThe 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 heightA glimmer, and then a gleam of light!He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,But lingers and gazes, till full on his sightA second lamp in the belfry burns!···A hurry of hoofs in the village street,A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a sparkStruck 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.It was twelve by the village clockWhen 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 rode into Lexington.He saw the gilded weathercockSwim in the moonlight as he passed,And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,Gaze at him with a spectral stare,As if they already stood aghastAt 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 the birds among the trees,And felt the breath of the morning breezeBlowing over the meadows brown.···So through the night rode Paul Revere;And so through the night went his cry of alarmTo 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 forever more!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 hearThe hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,And the midnight message of Paul Revere.—Longfellow.