Happy 4th with Frost

The Gift Outright

by Robert Frost

The land was ours before we were the land’s

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she will become.

Nate Note

After the applause, Kennedy welcomed to the podium one of America's great poets, fellow New Englander Robert Frost. Frost had written a poem for the occasion of Kennedy's Inauguration called "Dedication." He approached the microphone, but blinded by the sun's glare on the snow-covered Capitol grounds, he was unable to read it. Thinking quickly, he instead recited "The Gift Outright," a poem he had written in 1942.