The Midnight Ride

Paul Revere's Ride

Listen, my children, and you shall hear,

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year

By,

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Not when I was in school, but when my mother was in school, they were expected to know the whole poem, all 14 stanzas of it. All my mother could remember when she was an adult was the first stanza, and the one line "One, if by land, and two, if by sea," which she did with the appropriate arm thrust into the sky. About that time, I was glad that I hadn't gone to school with her.

Today would be a good day to look up this poem in it's entirety, and share it with your children. And to me, an added bonus is that the poem rhymes. That is important to me!

Poems

A few days ago, my daughter was challenged to write a limerick. She didn't find it easy, so her brother, hoping to help her with the challenge, scanned our shelves and gave her a Book of Poetry he had gotten for Christmas when he was probably about 7. And probably never opened since that Christmas morning soo long ago.

Sob! (Thinking back to those days always makes me a bit misty eyed. I am one of those women who really enjoyed having a handful of little children under her feet.)

My son suggested that the following poem from his Christmas book might fit nicely on my blog. I agreed, so here it is:

Kindness To Animals

Little children, never give

Pain to things that feel and live;

Let the gentle robin come

For the crumbs you save at home;

As his meat you throw along

He'll repay you with a song.

Never hurt the timid hare

Peeping from her green grass lair,

Let her come and sport and play

On the lawn at close of day.

The little lark goes soaring high

To the bright windows of the sky,

Singing as if 'twere always spring,

Amd fluttering on an untrired wing-

Oh! let him sing his happy song,

Nor do these gentle creatures wrong.

Author Unknown