The Gift Left Out

We all know the story of John F. Kennedy asking his fellow New Englander and favorite poet, Robert Frost, to come to Washington, D.C. and take part in his inauguration ceremony on January 20, 1961, and how Frost had composed a poem especially for the occasion and had brought a typewritten copy with him that day, but when Frost stepped up to the microphone and took out the poem, he couldn’t read the page because the sun was shining so brightly. If you look at the 60-year-old film of the inauguration ceremony, Frost is introduced as a distinguished poet who will read an original composition. Frost starts to read the original part, but falters repeatedly. The dignitaries behind him, including JFK and Jackie, notice he’s having trouble reading it. Finally Frost says that what he was trying to read was to be an introduction to an older poem he knew by heart called “The Gift Outright.” So he simply recited it. 

Here is what Frost was trying to read that day when I was 2 years and 8 months old. 

 

For John F. Kennedy's Inauguration 

Gift outright of "The Gift Outright" 

 (With some preliminary history in rhyme) 

by Robert Frost 

Summoning artists to participate 

In the august occasions of the state 

Seems something artists ought to celebrate. 

Today is for my cause a day of days. 

And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise 

Who was the first to think of such a thing. 

This verse that in acknowledgment I bring 

Goes back to the beginning of the end 

Of what had been for centuries the trend; 

A turning point in modern history. 

Colonial had been the thing to be 

As long as the great issue was to see 

What country'd be the one to dominate 

By character, by tongue, by native trait,

The new world Christopher Columbus found.

The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed

And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.

Elizabeth the First and England won.

Now came on a new order of the ages

That in the Latin of our founding sages

(Is it not written on the dollar bill

We carry in our purse and pocket still?)

God nodded His approval of as good.

So much those heroes knew and understood--

I mean the great four, Washington,

John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison--

So much they knew as consecrated seers

They must have seen ahead what now appears

They would bring empires down about our ears

And by the example of our Declaration

Make everybody want to be a nation.

And this is no aristocratic joke

At the expense of negligible folk.

We see how seriously the races swarm

In their attempts at sovereignty and form.

They are our wards we think to some extent

For the time being and with their consent,

To teach them how Democracy is meant.

"New order of the ages" did we say?

If it looks none too orderly today,

'Tis a confusion it was ours to start

So in it have to take courageous part.

No one of honest feeling would approve

A ruler who pretended not to love

A turbulence he had the better of.

Everyone knows the glory of the twain

Who gave America the aeroplane

To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.

Some poor fool has been saying in his heart

Glory is out of date in life and art.

Our venture in revolution and outlawry

Has justified itself in freedom's story

Right down to now in glory upon glory.

Come fresh from an election like the last,

The greatest vote a people ever cast,

So close yet sure to be abided by,

It is no miracle our mood is high.

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs

Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.

There was the book of profile tales declaring

For the emboldened politicians daring

To break with followers when in the wrong,

A healthy independence of the throng,

A democratic form of right divine

To rule first answerable to high design.

There is a call to life a little sterner,

And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.

Less criticism of the field and court

And more preoccupation with the sport.

It makes the prophet in us all presage

The glory of a next Augustan age

Of a power leading from its strength and pride,

Of young ambition eager to be tried, 

Firm in our free beliefs without dismay, 

In any game the nations want to play. 

A golden age of poetry and power 

Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.