When you grow up in Concord, Massachusetts, you know that Patriot’s Day is the best holiday of the year. On April 19, 1775, the minutemen and colonial militia offered the first successful armed resistance to His Majesty’s Regular Troops at the North Bridge in Concord. So began the War for American Independence.

Sadly, Concord’s Patriot’s Day parade now takes place on the nearest Monday; and this year even the parade was cancelled due to the freak nor’easter that roared through Monday morning. But it’s still a day to commemorate. Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose grandfather watched the battle from the old manse a dozen rods away from the bridge, commemorated this day with one of his most-quoted poems:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard ’round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We place with joy a votive stone,
That memory may their deeds redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

O Thou who made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free, —
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raised to them and Thee.

Happy Patriot’s Day.