 | ||
"Concord Hymn" (original title was "Hymn: Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19, 1836") is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson written for the 1837 dedication of the Obelisk, a monument in Concord, Massachusetts commemorating the Battle of Concord, the second in a series of battles and skirmishes on April 19, 1775 at the outbreak of the American Revolution.
Contents
History
In October 1834 Emerson went to live with his step-grandfather Ezra Ripley in Concord, at what was later named The Old Manse— less than a hundred paces from the spot where the battle took place. In 1835 he purchased a home on the Cambridge and Concord Turnpike and quickly became one of Concord's leading citizens. That same year he was asked to give a public lecture commemorating the town's 200th anniversary.
The "Concord Hymn" was written at the request of the Battle Monument Committee. At Concord's Independence Day celebration on July 4, 1837 it was first read, then sung as a hymn by a local choir using the then-familiar tune "Old Hundredth".
The poem elevates the battle above a simple event, setting Concord as the spiritual center of the American nation, and exalting a general spirit of revolution and freedom— a spirit Emerson hoped would outlive those who fought in the battle. One source of the hymn's power may be Emerson's personal ties to the subject: his grandfather William Emerson, Sr., witnessed the battle at the North Bridge while living at the Old Manse.
Emerson's poem was widely published in newspaper accounts of the dedication; in contrast there is no record of Congressman Samuel Hoar's speech that day. The poem, originally printed as a broadside for distribution at the monument's dedication, was republished as the last poem in Emerson's first edition of Poems in December, 1848 (the book, however, was dated 1847.) In that edition the poem appeared with the three line title "HYMN: / SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, / April 19, 1836." Emerson apparently confused the date of the 1837 dedication a decade earlier, July 4th, Independence Day with the anniversary of the battle, April 19th, Patriots' Day and the inscription on the obelisk mentions that it was erected in 1836.
Emerson's line "the shot heard 'round the world" is a fixture in the lore of the American Revolution, and the opening stanza is inscribed beneath the Daniel Chester French Minute Man statue dedicated (along with a replica of the Old North Bridge) at the 1875 commemoration of the original battle. "Concord Hymn" established Emerson as a poet; he was previously known as a lecturer and essayist. Emerson biographer Robert Richardson notes they have since become the most famous lines he has ever written. Concord's centennial celebration of Emerson's birth in 1903 ended with a singing of the hymn.
Text
(Note: This version is from The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904), edited by Edward Waldo Emerson, who noted, "From a copy of this hymn as first printed on slips for distribution among the Concord people at the celebration of the completion of the monument on the battle-ground, I note the differences from the poem here given as finally revised by Mr. Emerson in the Selected Poems.")