Twas the 18th of April, ‘75
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year
And the midnight ride of Paul Revere
The kids were both in bed with us this morning and I was firing trivia questions at them, as my wife and Sam quite enjoy. They would get questions like “what is the capital of Mongolia?” and “where are the pyramids?” For Isabel I had to ask questions like “What is your middle name?” (she drew a blank on that one) or “How many fingers am I holding up?” (she got that, after a bit of coaxing)
A good time was had by all. Then, I got to some question about the American Revolution and I remembered today’s date. So I google the poem and read it aloud to the kids, who had totally lost interest by the middle of the 1st stanza, but I plowed on through, reading it aloud to a houseful of people who were much more concerned with watching cartoons and making breakfast.
I like that poem because it tells a story, I like that poem because I liked it as a kid and I like that story because it is mnemonic history. I will never forget that the battle of Concord and Lexington, where the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world (but that’s from a different poem), happened on April 19th, 1775. Over a year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Oh, I know that it’s more about poetry than history, that William Dawes is written out of the credits just because “Revere” has so many good rhymes and that not only is no one alive who remembers that famous day and year, there are few alive who even remember the poem.
But I can never remember if it was one lamp or two. (It was two.)
Anyway, the world needs more mnemonic poems to help us remember great events from history. Maybe I’ll get to work on that.
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