Occupiers always refer to the land they are taking over as empty and awaiting them, destined for them. But what about the people who originally lived there, and who were ethnically cleansed by Pres. Andrew Jackson during the Trail of Tears, etc.?

The reference to England implies that all “real” Americans are, like Frost, descended from the English. But there were Spanish colonies on our land as early as the 1500s.

I find this poem anglocentric and offensive. However, all poets have the right to be heard.

That statement, I think, is fundamental to an understanding of not only Lincoln but also the Founding. The creation of America also entailed the destruction of an old way of life (“But we were England’s, still colonials…”)

Just as in Jefferson’s Letter to John Holmes,we had “the wolf by the ears, and [could] neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”

And leaving the Old World did come at an enormous cost; that was something forecast in the earliest days of the republic. At the outset, I don’t think anyone was publicly making an argument for slavery as they later did.

I think the poem is very appropriate, because the westward expansion of this country put slavery in the foreground of American politics. The acquisition of territories after all was the catalyst for slavery as well as antislavery efforts.

It was in this westward movement that America could decide for itself what it would do. No longer could this country say it had inherited the ways of the Old World: this place was “unstoried, artless, unenhanced,” fully “ours” to fill and fulfill.

But here, the question of “ours” and “we” gets larger the more you look at it. And “we” seems to be grounded in some sense of history, whatever it is. And the poem is entitled “the gift outright.”

On a more or less cynical note, depending on how you take it: yes, it is true, men care for property more than each other. That can imply men fight like hell for “the land.”

@Alice – Yeah, Frost ties “salvation in surrender” to “gave ourselves outright” – there is a loss of willfulness in one sense, in the sense of a lack of “withholding.” But possession is still there in another sense, perhaps that in which we credit discoveries to an explorer. I agree with where you’re going.

At first reading, I thought the poem was depressing. Going back, I felt his attempt to capture the American spirit of “newness” -our fascination with discovery that comes, perhaps with “surrender,” not in a “giving in” way, but in a change of attitude – now I belong, I am no longer England’s, I too can be always new and exciting (hence the “unstoried” and “unenhanced” seemingly negative words, but really holding great potential).

For what it’s worth…. and you may have already said this in a much better way.

I tend to remain silent about your interpretations of poems, not because I find them dull or wrong-headed, but because I think they’re often so good that I’m embarassed by the possible glaring disparity between the elegance of your interpretation and the clumsiness of my praise. If only there were an emoticon for ‘hat-doffing’, I might not have to worry so much about the desire to say “dude, that’s like, y’know…TOTALLY..” &c.

But this time, I have a question:

How do you connect the famous remark from Chuchill (on the Battle of Britain) to (Locke’s)’life, liberty, and property”. Something is going on there, that I think I missed. Am I entering premature dotage or…?

-Mal.