The Shot Heard Round the World

Today is the 246th anniversary of, “The Shot Heard Round the World” - otherwise known as the beginning of the American Revolution at the battles of Lexington & Concord on April 19th, 1775. Over sixty years later the event would be immortalized in verse by American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson with a poem entitled Concord Hymn. It goes a little something like this …

American Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

The scene Emerson describes is the fight at the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. It was there that American minutemen fired on (and successfully turned back) an advancing column of British regulars who had been sent into town to seize a hidden cache of rebel arms. If one wanted to nitpick, they might point out that the actual first shot of the revolution had taken place a few hours earlier at Lexington when that same British column dispersed a band of American minutemen hastily assembled on the town green - but the Americans lost that initial scrape, so Concord will do just fine, thank you very much.

Emerson’s poem was written in 1837 to coincide with the dedication of a memorial obelisk at the North Bridge battle site. Today the spot stands within the boundaries of Minute Man National Park. Perhaps you might pay it a visit sometime. While you’re at it, you might retrace the midnight ride of Paul Revere who (along with William Dawes and Samuel Prescott) warned the surrounding hamlets & villages of the approaching British. There’s a poem about that as well.