The Midnight Ride of Paul the Dinosaur

"Listen my hatchlings and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five (million B.C.);

Hardly a dino is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, "If the Red Coats march

Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

One if by land,  and two if by sea;

Three if they come riding the T

Four if by bridge, and five by taxi,

And I on the opposite shore will be,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm

Through every Middlesex village and farm,

For the country folk to be up and to arm."

From his vantage point up high,

Pterodactyl saw them moving by:

The muster of Red Coats at the barrack door,

He heard them chomp, he heard them roar

The earth-shaking tread of the dinosaurs,

Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Pterodactyl flew to the Old North Church,

Landed upon his steepled perch,

Pigeons flew as the tower lurched

And the sombre rafters round him creaked

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,

Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride

On the opposite shore stomped Paul Revere.

Now he patted his Brontosaurus's side,

Now he gazed at the landscape far and near,

But mostly he watched with eager search

And lo! From the tower of the Old North Church,

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!

He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,

But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight

A second lamp in the belfry burns.

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 flying fearless and fleet;

That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,

The fate of an era was riding that night;

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 for evermore!

For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,

The dinos will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,

And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

You know the rest. In the books you have read...

The Red Coat came, fired and fled

The farmers gave them ball for ball,

From behind each fence and farmyard wall,

Chasing the Red Coats down the lane.

 

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And the Red Coats were never heard of again,

In any Middlesex village or farm.