Essayist, poet, philosopher, and transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) penned the “Concord Hymn” as a commemorative hymn sung during the ceremony dedicating the North Bridge Obelisk battle monument in Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1836. The hymn remembers the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the first battle of the American Revolution, marking it forever with the line “… the shot heard round the world” (4). Although written about men who fought and died bravely in 1775, Emerson’s “Concord Hymn” encourages readers to remember all men (and women) who serve and die protecting freedom. In the first stanza, Emerson names the North Bridge “the rude bridge” giving the imagery of a poorly constructed bridge crossing the river (1). The colonial farmers’ flag unfurled there in battle on April 19, 1775. Stanza two moves the reader forward in time, marking that the bridge has long since been swept away, the British defeated, and Americans though victorious, are “silent” and slow to remember (6). The third and fourth stanzas are current time (1836). Stanza three is commemorating the day that they are setting the Obelisk to honor those who fought and gave their lives for freedom. The spirit of freedom in stanza four that dared patriots to fight and die is forever marked in the “shaft” of the North Bridge Obelisk (16). A possible reason the teacher selected the “Concord Hymn” for our memorization piece is that the author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and another author we are currently studying, Nathaniel Hawthorne, were both part of the transcendentalism