On July 4, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) delivered an invited poem at the inauguration of the Battle Monument at Concord, Massachusetts — fifty-one years after the Fourth of July issuing of the Declaration of Independence and fifty-two years after the Massachusetts minutemen opened fire on British troops at Lexington and Concord.

Only in the context of the small-scale rebellions before 1776 was it much of a battle. On April 19, 1775, the British, marching from Boston to confiscate the militia weapons stored at Concord, first encountered resistance at Lexington, which they easily overcame. But a smaller group of redcoats, the first to arrive at Concord, about seven miles from Lexington, were stopped at the North Bridge and forced to retreat until reinforced. Soon, however, the British did sweep into Concord, where they found that weapons had already been removed from the armory and hidden.

The Battle Monument—a 25-foot memorial, in the form of an obelisk atop an extended base—was intended to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution, but town politics (and squabbles with Lexington over priority) led to delays. The gain of the late celebration, however, was that the American Transcendentalist Emerson was allowed to write Today’s Poem of the Day: “Concord Hymn,” with its phrase that caught the national imagination, “the shot heard round the world.” In tetrameter quatrains, rhymed abab, Emerson gives us a classic patriotic text for the Fourth of July.

Concord Hymn
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
   And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
   Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
   Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
   We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
   When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
   To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
   The shaft we raise to them and thee.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.