And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
···
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm—
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forever more!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,