Independence Day

INTRODUCTION
When Englishmen first established colonies along the east coast of North America, they did not consider themselves Americans. They were Englishmen or perhaps Virginians or Marylanders. It took more than a century to establish themselves and begin to consider themselves a distinct nation.

POEM

THE GIFT OUTRIGHT

By Robert Frost

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 forwith 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, airless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Parini, Jay, ed. 1995. THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN POETRY. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231081227

EXTENSION
Discuss how this country would be different if we were still part of the British Empire or Commonwealth. Would immigrants from other nations be welcome? Would the land all the way to the Pacific have been united? Does the poem show how Frost felt about American independence?

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