Listen to Robert Frost Read ‘The Gift Outright,’ the Poem He Recited from Memory at JFK’s Inauguration

The read­ing from Cuban-Amer­i­can poet Richard Blan­co at Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s sec­ond inau­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny today fol­lows a tra­di­tion that began 52 years ago, when John F. Kennedy invit­ed his fel­low New Eng­lan­der Robert Frost to read at his inau­gur­al.

Frost was an ear­ly sup­port­er of Kennedy. On his 85th birth­day (March 26, 1959) he was asked by a reporter about the decline of New Eng­land’s cul­tur­al influ­ence in Amer­i­ca. “The next Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States will be from Boston,” replied Frost, accord­ing to Poets.org. “Does that sound as if New Eng­land is decay­ing?” At that time Kennedy had yet to for­mal­ly announce his can­di­da­cy, so Frost was asked to explain who he was talk­ing about. “He’s a Puri­tan named Kennedy. The only Puri­tans left these days are the Roman Catholics. There. I guess I wear my pol­i­tics on my sleeve.” When Pres­i­dent-elect Kennedy invit­ed the 86-year-old poet to read a poem at his inau­gu­ra­tion, if it was not too ardu­ous, Frost cabled his response:

IF YOU CAN BEAR AT YOUR AGE THE HONOR OF BEING MADE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, I OUGHT TO BE ABLE AT MY AGE TO BEAR THE HONOR OF TAKING SOME PART IN YOUR INAUGURATION. I MAY NOT BE EQUAL TO IT BUT I CAN ACCEPT IT FOR MY CAUSE–THE ARTS, POETRY, NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME TAKEN INTO THE AFFAIRS OF STATESMEN.

Frost wrote a new poem, “Ded­i­ca­tion,” espe­cial­ly for the occa­sion. But con­di­tions on inau­gu­ra­tion day con­spired against the old poet. A heavy blan­ket of snow fell on Wash­ing­ton the night before, and the sun­light that day was intense. In the harsh glare from the sun and snow, Frost found that he could­n’t read the type­script of his new poem. Kennedy had ear­li­er asked Frost, if he was­n’t going to write a new poem, to con­sid­er read­ing his poem on Amer­i­can his­to­ry, “A Gift Out­right.” So when Frost found that he could­n’t read the new poem, he recit­ed “A Gift Out­right” from mem­o­ry.

In the video above, we hear Frost read­ing the poem, which was writ­ten in the late 1930s and first pub­lished in 1942. Although some have said the audio is from the Kennedy inau­gu­ra­tion, it appar­ent­ly is not, because Frost reads the orig­i­nal text. For the inau­gu­ra­tion, the poet report­ed­ly agreed to Kennedy’s request to make a change in the final line. The phrase “Such as she would become” was changed to a more opti­mistic “Such as she will become.” (You can read the full text of the poem in a new win­dow.) Some­time after the event, Kennedy put Frost’s inau­gur­al appear­ance in per­spec­tive:

I asked Robert Frost to come and speak at the inau­gu­ra­tion because I felt he had some­thing impor­tant to say to those of us who are occu­pied with the busi­ness of gov­ern­ment, that he would remind us that we were deal­ing with life, of hopes and fears of mil­lions of peo­ple. He has said it well in a poem called “Choose Some­thing Like a Star,” in which he speaks of the fairest star in sight and says, “It asks lit­tle of us here./It asks of us a cer­tain height./So when at times the mob is swayed/to car­ry praise or blame too far,/we may choose some­thing like a star/ to stay our mind on and be stayed.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Robert Frost Recites ‘Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’