One if by land, and two if by sea

Cultural  

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.

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Example Sentences

Many American readers will still recognize the lines, if not necessarily the source, of “One if by land, and two if by sea,” “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord” or “‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, / But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.”

From The Wall Street Journal

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.”

From Seattle Times

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 …”

From Washington Times

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.

From Seattle Times

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?,”

From Washington Post