The Gift Outright
The Gift Outright - meaning Summary
Nationhood Through Surrender
Frost’s poem traces the birth of American identity by reversing ownership: land existed before people became its people. Early colonists were legally English yet emotionally tied to the land; only by relinquishing themselves—by surrendering personal or inherited loyalties—did they truly become national. That self-giving is framed as both spiritual salvation and physical conquest, a "deed of gift" achieved through wars and westward expansion. The poem registers ambivalence: the country is claimed and reshaped, becoming "storied" and altered while remaining rooted in its earlier, artless state.
Read Complete AnalysesThe 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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