One if by land, and two if by sea

1. The words used by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “Paul Revere's Ride” to describe the signal used to guide the “midnight ride of Paul Revere” at the start of the Revolutionary War. Revere had ordered two lanterns to be placed in a Boston church tower to warn his confederates that the British were on the move. Longfellow embellished the story a little.

Example Sentences

The event has been immortalized in the line “One if by land, and two if by sea” in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1860 poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.”

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His backup plan - lighting either one or two lanterns as signals from the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church - is immortalized in a line in “Paul Revere’s Ride,” a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: “One if by land, and two if by sea …”

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In the American Revolution, Paul Revere’s signal was famously to look for lanterns in the Old North Church in Boston — “one if by land, and two if by sea” — to describe the British approach.

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As it happens, all these are by Longfellow — the subject of Nicholas Basbanes’s new biography “Cross of Snow”— and they share certain characteristics: They are narrative poems, patriotic in character and chockablock with memorable lines: “One, if by land, and two, if by sea,” “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?,”

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Revere’s backup plan - preparations to light either one or two lanterns as signals from the steeple of Boston’s Old North Church - is immortalized in a line in “Paul Revere’s Ride,” a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: “One if by land, and two if by sea …”

Read more on Washington Times