Jan. 20, 1961: Inaugural Ceremonies for John F. Kennedy

I was a bit young to have witnessed this inauguration, but I have enjoyed it much since. Robert Frost gives his own poem at about 15:00- 16:00 minutes, The Gift Outright. It is well worth watching in It's entirely just to see the many famous dignitaries.

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 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, “The Gift Outright” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost (Henry Holt & Co., 1969)