Paul Revere's Ride: Key Poetic Devices

Caesura and Enjambment

Throughout “Paul Revere’s Ride” Longfellow uses a combination of these two techniques to manipulate the overall pace and rhythm of the language from stanza to stanza. The term caesura (say-ZHOO-rah) refers to a strong pause that occurs in the middle of a poetic line. Many lines in the poem feature one or more such strong pauses. In concert with caesura, Longfellow also frequently employs the technique of enjambment (en-JAM-ment), which occurs whenever one line flows continuously into the next without stopping. Used together, these techniques offer Longfellow the ability to control his language to different effects. Perhaps most significantly, they often collaborate to produce verse that sounds closer to prose. As an example, consider the third stanza (lines 15–23):

Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Four of these lines feature an instance of caesura, and four lines are enjambed. Here, their combined use has the curious effect of deemphasizing the rhymes. Though the stanza has a relatively regular pattern of rhyming couplets and triplets (AABBCCCDD), this scheme is made less apparent by way the verses often race past the rhyming words and instead stop in the middle of the next line.

Metaphor

Metaphor (MEH-tuh-for) is a figure of speech that makes an implicit comparison between two unlike things. Although in general Longfellow uses less elaborate forms of figurative language in the poem, there is one significant example of metaphor. Crucially, this example of metaphor arises at the poem’s climax, as Paul Revere takes off on his horse to go spread the news of the imminent British invasion (lines 73–80):

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

These lines describe how a single spark created by the horse’s hoof ended up “kindl[ing] the land into flame with its heat.” Historically, of course, no such blaze swept through New England on the night of Paul Revere’s ride. Rather, the speaker is describing a metaphorical fire, one that symbolizes the spirit of American resistance to the British. The spark that flew from the horse’s hoof may also be understood as a symbol for small action that can have significant effects. In this case, Paul Revere’s plan to warn his fellow countrymen of the British arrival by sea is the small action that sparks a fire of resistance that’s soon to sweep across the land.

Personification

Personification is a literary device in which a poet or speaker attributes human qualities to a nonhuman or an inanimate object. At key moments in the poem, Longfellow uses personification to describe aspects of the natural and built environments. The first example comes when the speaker describes the view from the belfry tower. As the man in charge of giving Paul Revere a signal looks over the moonlit churchyard, he sees a somber view of the graveyard. The scene is completely silent except for “the watchful night-wind,” which is “creeping along from tent to tent, / And seeming to whisper, ‘All is well!’” (lines 46–48). Here, the night-wind appears as something of a character, moving about and seeking, in the face of evident danger, to inspire confidence. In this way, the night-wind functions as a nonhuman collaborator in the American resistance to the British. A similar use of personification appears later in the poem, when Paul Revere rides through the towns of Middlesex (97–100):

And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

Here, the windows “gaze” with a “blank and bare” expression, as if they can already see the future violence soon to sweep through the streets. Like the night-wind, these watchful windows seem mysteriously aware of the coming American war of resistance.

Simile

A simile (SIH-muh-lee) is a figure of speech that explicitly compares two unlike things to each other, usually with a connecting word such as “like” or “as.” Longfellow uses several similes in “Paul Revere’s Ride.” For example, the speaker describes the moonlit shadows cast by the British man-of-war’s mast as looking “like a prison-bar” (line 21). Later, in the sixth stanza, as the speaker describes the graveyard below the belfry tower, they liken the sound of “the watchful night-wind” (line 46) to “a sentinel’s tread” (45). The speaker uses another simile at the end of the same stanza, this time describing a large “shadowy something” (line 53) floating far off in the sea as looking “like a bridge of boats” (56). None of these similes is particularly elaborate or striking. Indeed, they are all simple and unfussy, and therefore they don’t draw much attention to themselves. Even so, they do introduce a few brief examples of figurative language into a poem that is otherwise focused on narrative.

Previous section Rhyme