The Gift Outright
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.
This is a strange poem, but then again, America is a strange place, even if everyone professes to understand it. The name “America” does not occur in the poem: “the land,” “ours,” “she” and the ambiguous-enough “the gift outright” all substitute. The last word of the poem is “become:” does America even exist yet?
A relation between existence and possession is posited. “The land” – again, not “America” – “was ours.” At a later point, “we were the land’s.” Possession, at the least, marks existence, even if it does not properly name what is: “our land,” “her people.” Reciprocal possession might be love, but note “before” – reciprocal possession starts with one claiming possession. This creates the problem of time: did anyone make a claim on us? Did we make prior claims?
On that latter question, we most certainly did: there are two distinct sets of colonies and traditions, Massachusetts and Virginia. Our claim to those plots was based on the English claim to us; do we want to say England loved us? Part of the poem seems to refute this idea. If love is reciprocal possession, then “Possessed by what we now no more possessed” seems to imply England had nothing like true love. But that’s a shallow, lazy way out given this: The deed of gift was many deeds of war. And Frost is well-aware of the significance of “life, liberty and property” to our heritage, the precursor of “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
Possession seems to be the possibility of love by mid-poem, though. After all, “we” were “withholding” “something,” and we felt enervated. Possession is about strength; when we feel weak, we are experiencing the most base reaction. This is not love, not yet. This is only “salvation in surrender.” We are brought to the final of 5 sentences, which is itself 5 lines. “We” are “the gift outright,” it seems, but all the doubts the modern Left has about America are there: “vaguely realizing westward” implies we did not and do not know where we are going. “But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, / Such as she was, such as she would become” implies that leaving the Old World came at enormous cost: can we ever progress, or are we forever marked by frontier crudity?
What is unsaid is vital: we have a name for the New World, and it is ours, all of ours. As many of us were slavers, that many more died to emancipate. The lack of the name is the will to sacrifice, and that is the authentic piety of love. We have surrendered to the land, it takes us where it will; there is a body/soul relation throughout the poem, and a comment on what spirit is in “unstoried,” “unenhanced.”