Concord Hymn

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837

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 which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set today a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Shot heard round the world

What did Ralph Waldo Emerson mean by the shot heard round the world?

The phrase comes from the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn" (1837) and refers to the first shot of the American Revolution at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, where the first British soldiers fell in the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.

The phrase indicates that the shots fired at British troops during the Battle of Concord marked America's first victory against the powerful British army, which in turn sparked the Revolutionary War and lead to America's independence.

Lexington and Concord were the sites of the first fighting in the Revolutionary War. … No one knows who fired the first shot, but, in "Concord Hymn," Ralph Waldo Emerson described it as "the shot heard round the world" because of the importance the Revolutionary War and the United States would have in world history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_heard_round_the_world