Analysis of The Gift Outright
Robert Frost 1874 (San Francisco) – 1963 (Boston)
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.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNGO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01110011001 11101110101 01100101110 00100010 1101010100 010111011 0111111101 1010010111 01111111001 100101101110 01110100010 11101100111 0111110111 1011010010 11111 1111111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 663 |
Words | 119 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 16 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 534 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 117 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 19, 2023
- 36 sec read
- 319 Views
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"The Gift Outright" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/30917/the-gift-outright>.
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