Paul Revere's Ride Analysis

Longfellow is known for using regular rhyme and meter. For the most part, that's the case in this poem, but things do get a little complicated in a few places. Let's start with the easy part: the...

For some reason, we picture the speaker of this poem as a fun, twinkly-eyed old grandfather. (Maybe it's the "listen, my children" stuff at the beginning.) He probably doesn't get around so well a...

So if you'll bear with us, we imagine this whole poem taking place on the floor during kindergarten story time. You know the scene because you've been there. A ratty old rug on a hard linoleum fl...

The sounds of the poem go through different stages, as Longfellow takes you through Revere's busy night. At the beginning – up until about line 72, when Paul takes off on his horse – everythin...

Usually epic poems are supposed to be longer, but this poem matches the definition of an epic in other ways. It tells a story of heroic deeds in the past, so it makes sense to think of it as a min...

Longfellow didn't get too fancy with the title of this poem. He was writing a poem about a famous ride taken by a man called Paul Revere, so he called it (drum roll, please) "Paul Revere's Ride."...

We like Longfellow, but we admit that not everyone does. Some people find him a little corny, and poetry snobs think he's way too easy. But we don't think Longfellow would have minded that at all...

At the end of the day, this is just a good, exciting story. There are a few tricky words in your path, and you might need to brush up on your history a little, but we're confident it will be an ea...

Just good clean family fun here. We could make a joke about the poem taking place in "Middlesex," but fortunately Shmoop is way too grown up for that.