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Rivers and Bridges

Over the course of the poem, Paul Revere crosses several rivers, typically over bridges. The first crossing he makes comes immediately after he parts ways with his friend, who is headed to the belfry tower. Revere rows across the Charles River to get to his horse on the other side. With this river crossing, Revere makes the symbolic first step in his plan. Like Julius Caesar’s famous crossing of the Rubicon, Revere’s crossing of the Charles marks a point of no return. Later, once his collaborator sends him the signal that the British are coming by sea, Revere takes off on his horse to warn the people of Middlesex. During this ride he crosses two more bridges. The first is “the bridge into Medford town” (line 87), and the second is “the bridge in Concord town” (line 102). These bridge crossings symbolically repeat Revere’s initial crossing of the Charles and metaphorically underscore the transgressive nature of defiance of the British. To emphasize this last point about transgression and defiance, the speaker presents a brief prophecy of an event that will soon take place on the Concord bridge (lines 107–110):

     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.

Here, the bridge becomes not just a figurative site of resistance, but a literal one.

The Night-Wind

Twice in the poem the speaker references a mysterious “night-wind.” The first reference comes when Revere’s collaborator looks down on the churchyard below the belfry tower (lines 42–48):

     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!”

Here, the speaker offers a personified description of a “watchful night-wind” that sweeps between the graves that make up the “night-encampment” of the dead. Despite the silence of this moonlit scene, the breeze makes a sound that uncannily resembles “a sentinel’s tread.” This description presents the wind something of an occult force that has come to reassure the anxious watchtower lookout that Revere’s plan will work out in the end: “All is well!” The second reference to a night-wind doesn’t appear until the poem’s final stanza. There, the speaker recaps the events they’ve just narrated and then concludes with a brief reflection on the enduring importance of Revere’s midnight ride (lines 125–30):

     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.

In the speaker’s figurative description, a mysterious “night-wind of the Past” sweeps through “all our history,” up to the present moment. Just as the first night-wind brought with it the uncanny sound of marching soldiers, this night-wind carries “the hurrying hoof-beats of that steed” that helped Revere deliver his “midnight message.” Once again, the speaker presents the night-wind as an occult force. Here, though, it’s more closely akin to the force of History itself, blowing from the past to present to remind us of what it took to get here.

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