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Paul Revere’s status as a figure in early American history is the stuff of legends. Longfellow reflects Revere’s legendary status by structuring “Paul Revere’s Ride” in a way that strongly recalls the ballad tradition. A ballad is a type of narrative poem that’s often used to recount the stories of legendary events and local heroes. Though many ballads recount tragic stories, some also tell stories of triumph. Ballads have been popular for hundreds of years, beginning in the early modern period with ballads that were often sung by court musicians and traveling minstrels. Popular ballads like “Sir Patrick Spens” and “Bonny Barbara Allen” were known far and wide. The ballad form remains influential to this day. Bob Dylan, for example, is a master of the narrative ballad. Because ballads are often meant to be sung, they are typically organized into quatrains with a regular meter and a repeating ABAB rhyme scheme. Longfellow doesn’t follow these formal rules to the letter, but he does use both meter and rhyme in ways that evoke ballad form.

However, more significant than these formal features is the overall structure of Longfellow’s poem. Ballads often follow a loose, three-part structure: an introduction, the narrative itself, and a conclusion. This is precisely the structure Longfellow uses to recount Paul Revere’s ride on April 18, 1775. Longfellow opens the poem with an introductory stanza that calls the audience to attention and announces the subject of the verses to follow. The narrative account then properly begins in the second stanza and continues until the end of the third-to-last stanza. The story breaks into two different strands of action. After Revere gives instructions to his friend and they part, the narrative then alternates between these two men. One narrative strand follows the friend as he climbs the belfry tower and prepares to send Revere a signal. The other strand follows Revere as he crosses the river, mounts his horse, and eventually rides through Middlesex. At this point, the speaker concludes the poem with two stanzas, which together form a coda. The speaker insists that the reader already knows what happened next. So, instead of continuing the story, they briefly recap the events just narrated and insist on the enduring legend of Paul Revere (lines 126–30):

     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.

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