Introduction of the Poem:
One of the greatest of Robert Frost's patriotic poems, “The Gift Outright” is a great poem in its own right. It was read by the poet before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at William and Mary College, on 5 December 1941. The poem found its way in The Virginia Quarterly Review in spring 1942. Finally it got published in A Witness Tree. President Kennedy liked the poem so much that he invited Frost to recite this poem at the time of his inauguration as President of the United States in 1961.
The poem begins by making a reference to the colonization of America. America remained a colony of Britain before she get independence. The part known as New England existed before the people who came to inhabit it went to settle there. The cities like Massachusetts in Virginia were already in existence before colonizers from England captured them and made part of their colonies. For a time the entire new continent remained under the yoke of England. But these people did not identify themselves with the country which they occupied. They ruled over America only because the local people could not put their claim strongly. When the natives of America decided to dedicate themselves for the salvation of the country, the nation became free and the westward thrust of the people started.
Summary of the Poem:
‘The Gift Outright’ is a patriotic poem exhausting its listener to make a full and final gift of their whole selves to their country. It narrates within just its sixteen lines the history of the United States of America's Colonization, struggle for independence and independence.
Initially the native inhabitants of America had no national feeling. They lived in the country as masters, but did not regard it as their motherland or fatherland. They lived there as its possessors or occupies for one hundred years but they had no feelings towards her as being its children. They occupied cities like Massachusetts in Virginia and regarded themselves as basically belonging to England. In other words they were colonists. Though they occupied the land, they did not regard themselves as belonging to it. At that time the people regarded themselves as belonging to England, which country they now (when they are an independent nation) do not possess.
The reason behind this fluid state of indecision was that the people refused to owe their whole - hearted allegiance to the country (America), they lived in. But soon they realized that their salvation or deliverance lay in their whole hearted surrender or loyalty to their country. Then they gave themselves up wholly to their country. This meant that they fought a number of wars for independence. They then started going westward in the country, with which they were only vaguely familiar. As yet this country had neither its history, nor its peculiar art , nor still any improvement . Now they saw what like their country was as a fact and also what were its potentialities.
Critical Appreciation of the Poem:
The poem “The Gift Outright” is one of the greatest poems of Robert Frost. In the span of sixteen lines the poet succeeded in writing the history of United States from the earliest times to the time of independence and later. It is one of the best patriotic poems about America. The theme of the poem attracted the attention of John F. Kennedy and he invited Robert Frost to his inauguration as President and requested him to recite this poem at that time. Frost recited the poem and thus raised it to the level of a national anthem. In the most unsophisticated manner, the poet recalls the history of America's colonization:
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.
The early colonizers did not identify themselves with the land of their occupation. It was only when they started to bestow their love on the country that real freedom movement started:
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
This was the “gift” which the nation demanded of her people. Only when this gift was offered that the country could move out into the era which previously was “unstoried, artless and unenhanced.”
Robert Frost himself was greatly conscious of this poem and called it “all my politics ….. my national history.” About this poem Brower has observed: ‘Frost was making a poem, and not a National Monument, when he wrote it, is clear from his remark after an early reading, that it was a ‘nice piece of blank verse.’ Although he has called it a narrative and ‘a history of United States in seventeen lines’, The Gift Outright is better described as poetic definition of an American state of mind, a compact psychological essay on colonialism. What is remarkable is how the necessities of definition become the vehicle of poetry, bringing the sense of musical delight not as something additional to statement, but as beautifully inevitable. Contradictions that run deep in our history and in our national mind— part of being American in the feeling that we also belong to the country our ancestors came from— as imaged in contradiction of poetry. "
The economy with which Frost draws the picture of his country before and after independence is a marvel. The poet does not use many adjectives in the praise of the country. On the contrary it is economy in the use of adjectives which makes the poem a gem of American literature.
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