The Gift outright by Robert Frost

          

Poem:

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. 

                                                             Robert Frost

Analysis of the poem:

       The gift outright is a poem by Robert Frost, which is deals with a serious issue of the United States. It is about a constant conflict going on between the native people of America and the settlers of colonizers who made UAS their permanent home. The poem is addressed by a descendent of the settler and it is address to the native community. The poem is in fact a request of the descendent to the native of the people to accept the settlers as one part of native community.

       The poem opens with the tone of a request in which the descendent of settlers says that he has accepted that country as his motherland but still he has not been accepted as a native but people of that country the descendent consider every state of the US as his home but still he has treated as a colonizer and as outsider by the people of that country it is this difference which pains the descendent.

      The descendent admits that, for a long spam of time he himself and many other descendent remained aloof and did not mix with native community. But a change has come in the attitude of the descendents and he has surrendered to the native people. The settlers have realized that there is no salvation for them if there is no surrender from their side. This descendent in the present poem would like to himself as a gift to the native people. His request to the native people is to see that he is accepted as a gift and not rejected. 

         The present poem can be considering a polite request of the descendent of colonizers to accept all descendents of as the native people of America. He agrees that in the past many conflicts and wars taken place but that has not sold the problem of conflict between the native people and colonizers. So he wants to offer himself as a gift to the native people. The descendents of colonizer may be artless, without enhancement and without any story of their own but he would be happy if his accepted as gift. Robert Frost himself experienced this conflict between the native and the settlers and here he try to give a solution to that problem of conflict between native and colonizer can be solved only with love, violence has no place in it.