Robert Frost, "The Gift Outright"

"The Gift Outright" could seduce through its music alone. For a taste, read these lines aloud: "...we found out that it was ourselves / We were withholding from our land of living, / And forthwith found salvation in surrender." Frost is not shy about repeating words or sounds, and previous "f's" and "ou's" build to a climactic "found salvation in surrender." The purported grandeur of the poem's theme also makes it a force to reckon with, though it is horribly misguided. Americans, through a mystical connection with the legacy of the colonists, can find "salvation in surrender." If we give ourselves up to the land, the continent, as they did, we demonstrate our freedom, breaking from the possession of an empire to being possessed ourselves by a more natural power.

"The Gift Outright" was read aloud at JFK's inauguration. Its ambiguities about the American enterprise were then suppressed in favor of sentiments that united Manifest Destiny and the notion of progress. Plenty want to believe that past injustices, the sheer accumulation of land and power, will naturally turn into a future moral good. This is a complicated belief in some ways, not entirely suitable to ascribe to an America addicted to the language of celebrity gossip and pornography. It's the belief of serious high school and college students who see that books make a difference. Who seek people who actually know what they're talking about, in part because intellectual honesty is so refreshing compared to people yelling at you about what they saw on Facebook or just making up crap to get angry at.

In a weird way, they've got to believe that grave moral wrongs can be transcended–we might all have to believe this, to some degree–but that does lead to a trap. It becomes too easy to see Frost's "we" as speaking to everyone regardless of creed or color when it clearly does not. For me, "The Gift Outright" is a cautionary lesson. Too much emphasis on a founding myth can destroy the reality of history. It is not clear that the people who really made America a place for everyone can be said in any way to have "found salvation in surrender." Their stories are too complex, and Frost threatens to eliminate the hard details of their lives in favor of his patriotic hymn.

The Gift Outright
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.

The outstanding question: Why, exactly, can't Frost's "we" be everyone? Why can't the reality of the American Revolution also be our reality, why can't the "mystic chords of memory" resonate throughout the ages? I'm looking at those first seven lines and feeling, for a brief moment, that I, too, want to be a colonial American (not the life insurance):

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.

Someone can say we still live in states like Massachusetts and Virginia, we still debate what freedom means in the shadow of empire, and we certainly wonder about our obligations to the land. What is wrong with saying that we are trying to achieve becoming "her [the land's] people?" Why isn't the incompleteness of "The land was ours before we were the land's" cause to celebrate?

I've said above that Frost's poem is historically reductive, but in the case of these amazing lines, it is neglectful to an extreme degree. The topless towers of Ilium are no match for the soaring heights of ignorance here. These lines depend on being able to envision Americans as deeply appreciative of the soil they're on, so much so they are near indistinguishable from the Natives they commit mass-murder against. I'm not just saying that the poem neglects things like genocide and slavery. I'm saying that for this poem to work, early Americans have to be envisioned as cognizant of a moral choice not unlike ancient Israel. They have to choose something with the magnitude of whether they will be like other peoples or place trust in the sanctity of the law alone. (Thomas Paine: "so far as we approve of monarchy... in America the law is king.")

For those immersed in Christian nationalism, where quotes from both the Bible and the Framers are repeatedly taught out of context, this is not a problem. Unfortunately for them, a serious high school or college student capable of reading books not written by Glenn Beck or PragerU can immediately see what's wrong. Yes, there's lots of bravery involved standing up to Britain. Yes, there's a hope that rights will expand to groups who haven't had them. Yes, lots of people back then read. But is an emphasis on private property and a Constitutional order which encourages sheer ambition anything like a mystical union with the land?

The pettiness of America is completely absent from Frost's musing. And that pettiness isn't unimportant to Constitutionalism! The idea that launched a revolution was that there would be no aristocracy and nobility. That democracy would mean featuring real issues like potholes not being fixed or the jail being smelly. To put it in the vernacular of young people, America at its best is about being less "fake."

Frost's poem fails as mythmaking because it offers a version of history that is far too glossy. Perhaps worse, it offers nothing to advance anyone's understanding. I'm reading Nietzsche right now because I'm interested in his conception of freedom. I'm reading Heidegger in order to think through what a more authentic society might be like. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger are enamored with foundational myths, including ones that lend themselves to extreme nationalism and jingoism. But if Heidegger, for example, is thinking about "land," he takes time to spell out how people's whole lives were oriented around it in "Building Dwelling Thinking." Granted, Frost has only given us one poem, but he has given us no real reason to surrender to the land other than vague promises of future glory.

The last lines of "The Gift Outright" are beautiful, conveying a sense of motion. We're moving west, our gaze is shifting, as the poem ends. But these lines are also far too vague, only hinting at the violence, cruelty, and terror that America all too often unleashes:

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.

The problem here is the overreliance on a poor myth. Did we really give ourselves outright "[t]o the land vaguely realizing westward?" I feel like people stole a lot of land. I live in a city of pumpjacks where quite a few don't care if the land is a puddle of toxic stew as long as they get paid for barrels full of oil.

And again, there's no way to say that someone like, I dunno, Harriet Tubman gave themselves to the land. It doesn't make any sense. The best people are continually learning to fight for others, not abstractions or amounts. When we complain that people's needs aren't materially met, in large part we're fighting a system that treats land more as an attribute of wealth or legacy as opposed to a real need. "The Gift Outright" is especially outrageous in an America where it is difficult to find a place to live.

Further reading:

• Albert J. Von Frank does a magnificent job talking about how the "deed of gift" probably refers to no less than a Satanic pact. I should give Frost credit for a very subversive phrase.
• There are a lot of poets who have something to say about "The Gift Outright."