郎費羅 (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) 生於1807年2月27日
　

聽，孩子們，你們會聽到，
保羅‧裏維爾夜半騎馬來。

 「保羅‧裏維爾騎馬來」 (Paul Revere』s Ride) 這首詩發表於1863年的「路邊客棧的故事」 (Tales of a Wayside Inn) 一書中。保羅‧裏維爾是一個愛國志士，他快馬奔馳在麻州的來欣頓與康科兩個小鎮之間，警告人們英軍即將來襲。郎費羅的詩在歐洲也很受歡迎。在他死後 (1882年) ，他成為唯一一位在英國西敏寺 (Westminster Abbey) 的「詩人隅」中 (Poet's Corner) 留名的美國人。

當郎費羅在哈佛大學任教時，他的第一任妻子已經去世，所以他和第二任妻子芬妮‧愛波頓 (Fanny Appleton) ，還有六個小孩一起

住在麻州的劍橋。有一天，當他獨自在家時，突然有件事情激發了他的靈感，於是他寫了一首有關他小孩的詩。


Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere

"Paul Revere's Ride" was published in Tales of a Wayside Inn in 1863. Paul Revere was the patriot who rode on horseback through the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord warning of the upcoming British attack. Longfellow's poems were also popular in Europe. After he died in 1882, he became the only American commemorated in the Poet's Corner in England's Westminster Abbey.

While Longfellow was a professor at Harvard University, he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his second wife, Fanny Appleton, (his first wife died) and his six children. One day, while he was at home, something happened that inspired him to write a poem about his children.

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