poem was written to be sung as a hymn at the completion of the monument erected on the bank of the Concord River in Massachusetts April 19, 1836. It was there that the colonial minutemen withstood the British regulars on April 19, 1775, and, as Emerson says, "fired the shot heard round the world," beginning the War of American Independence.

Emerson's grandfather, William Emerson, was a minister at Concord in 1775, and had strongly urged resistance to the British in his sermons. He himself stood with the farmers by the bridge, saying to the minutemen, "Let us stand our ground. If we die, let us die here."

The battle took place near the minister's own house, which was afterwards the home of his grandson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne gave it fame as "The Old Manse" of his writings.

by Ralph Waldo Emerson