such as she would become

Here's Robert Frost's famous poem, which he read at John F. Kennedy's inauguration, in January 1961 ...

... I believe it was the first time that a Poet had spoken at the inauguration of a U.S. President - and Frost recited his poem from memory:


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.

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Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

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