Robert Frost reciting a poem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy

On Januvary 20, 2009, the inauguration of Barack Obama will be a day that will live forever in American and world history. I began to think back to the inauguration of John F. Kennedy when Robert Frost recited a poem on that big day.

Frost orginally wrote a long poem, “Dedication” for the inauguration, but the glare of the sun on the snow blinded him (he was 86 years old) so he recited the poem below instead called “The Gift Outright”, which he knew by heart. The inauguration was on a freezing day, the whole northeastern coast was snowed in. As a young child, I remember watching the inauguration on TV.

The Gift Outright
Written in 1942, recited at JFK’s inauguration in 1961
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 would become.

Robert Frost

Inaugural Address – John F. Kennedy