Living a Purposeful Life. Kalman J. Kaplan

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СКАЧАТЬ everyday lives, which seem to be empty of purpose. Mindlessly emulating Pheidippides’ run seems a prime example of this. And even if Pheidippides’ action did have a specific purpose, rather than reflect an amorphous need for meaning, why did he not ride a horse as did Paul Revere. We will examine Paul Revere’s story now.

      The Ride of Paul Revere

      Paul Revere was a silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and patriot in the American Revolution against Britain. He was obviously not an ancient Greek, but a biblical man, by all accounts a fairly typical early New England Christian. Paul Revere seemed to have been a regular attendee in Boston’s New Brick Church and was most likely quite familiar with stories in the Hebrew Bible and in the Christian New Testament.

      Paul Revere is best known for his midnight ride to alert the colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, Paul Revere’s Ride. He did not seem to be searching for meaning. Rather, his action had a purpose. Most importantly, Paul Revere did not die, nor did he push himself beyond his endurance.

      Listen, my children, and you shall hear

      Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

      On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:

      Hardly a man is now alive

      Who remembers that famous day and year.

      He said to his friend, “If the British march

      By land or sea from the town to-night,

      Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch

      Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—

      One if by land, and two if by sea.

      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.”

      Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar

      Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

      Just as the moon rose over the bay,

      Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

      The Somerset, British man-of-war:

      A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

      Across the moon, like a prison-bar,

      And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

      By its own reflection in the tide.

      Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street

      Wanders and watches with eager ears,

      Till in the silence around him he hears

      The muster of men at the barrack door,

      The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,

      And the measured tread of the grenadiers

      Marching down to their boats on the shore.

      Then he climbed to the tower of the church,

      Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,

      To the belfry-chamber overhead,

      And startled the pigeons from their perch

      On the sombre rafters, that round him made

      Masses and moving shapes of shade,—

      By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,

      To the highest window in the wall,

      Where he paused to listen and look down

      A moment on the roofs of the town,

      And the moonlight flowing over all.

      Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,

      In their night-encampment on the hill,

      Wrapped in silence so deep and still

      That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,

      The watchful night-wind, as it went

      Creeping along from tent to tent,

      And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”

      A moment only he feels the spell

      Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread

      Of the lonely belfry and the dead.

      For suddenly all his thoughts are bent

      On a shadowy something far away,

      Where the river widens to meet the bay,—

      A line of black, that bends and floats

      On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

      Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,

      Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,

      On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.

      Now he patted his horse’s side,

      Now gazed on the landscape far and near,

      Then impetuous stamped the earth,

      And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;

      But mostly he watched with eager search

      The belfry-tower of the old North Church,

      As it rose above the graves on the hill,

      Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.

      And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,

      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 that flies fearless and fleet:

      That was all! And yet, СКАЧАТЬ