Hear Longfellow's missing lines on Paul Revere

The first of four lectures at at Old South Meeting House honoring the 150th anniversary of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" will feature a little bonus: the missing stanza. In his lecture "Listen, My Children: 'Paul Revere's Ride' in Poetry and Legend," on Sept. 8 at 6:30 p.m., historian Charles Bahne will read for the first time aloud an entire, original stanza omitted from the poem's first publication in The Atlantic Monthly. While researching the poem, which polished up Revere's legend a bit, Bahne went back to Longfellow's original manuscript and found that 14 lines at the end of the poem were never published in any version, and may have been replaced by lines penned by someone at The Atlantic. Naughty! His lecture is the first in the Paul Revere Memorial Association's Series "One Hundred Fifty Years of Paul Revere's Ride: Facts, Fables, and Fiction." The series runs four consecutive Wednesdays, starting Sept. 8, and also includes talks by historian and blogger John L. Bell, educator Bob Damon, and New Yorker writer and Harvard professor Jill Lepore. The talks are free and open to the public at the Meeting House, 310 Washington St. in Downtown Crossing. More info: (617) 523-2338.