A Gift Of Robert Frost

The first time I knew there was something called poetry that was created by people known as poets, was January 20, 1961.

The first time I knew there was something called poetry that was created by people known as poets was January 20, 1961 when Robert Frost was invited by John F. Kennedy to write and recite a poem commemorating JFK's inauguration as President.

I was eight years old when I sat cross-legged on the living room floor before our television - riveted by the black and white pageantry and splendor of the inauguration - surely the grandest there ever had been or would be - as the old man approached the podium. 

The weather in Washington D.C. that day was bright and sunny but bitterly cold. Due to the sun's glare, Frost, who was 86 and failing at the time, was unable to read from the page on which his poem, "Dedication", was typed. Instead, he recited from memory, his earlier poem, "The Gift Outright". 

I still see that frail old man, leaning into the wind, leaning for so very long, delivering his gift of words; words this child could scarcely comprehend, but that reverberated with majesty, mystery and magic.  

For a moment, each January, when the weather most echoes that now long ago Inauguration Day, the blinding rays of the sun fighting through the swaddling, smothering blankets of frigid air - I think of that First Day and of Robert Frost, forever leaning. 

And during that moment, I thank Mr. Frost for the gift of poetry.  

Postscript: For many years, the original inaugural poem was thought to be lost or discarded, never read or published and largely forgotten until 2006 when it was mailed anonymously to the Kennedy library. This is that poem. 

DEDICATION  By Robert Frost

Summoning artists to participate

In the august occasions of the state

Seems something artists ought to celebrate.

Today is for my cause a day of days.

And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise

Who was the first to think of such a thing.

This verse that in acknowledgement I bring

Goes back to the beginning of the end

Of what had been for centuries the trend;

A turning point in modern history.

Colonial had been the thing to be

As long as the great issue was to see

What country'd be the one to dominate

By character, by tongue, by native trait,

The new world Christopher Columbus found.

The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed

And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.

Elizabeth the First and England won.

Now came on a new order of the ages

That in the Latin of our founding sages

(Is it not written on the dollar bill

We carry in our purse and pocket still?)

God nodded his approval of as good.

So much those heroes knew and understood,

I mean the great four, Washington,

John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison

So much they saw as consecrated seers

They must have seen ahead what not appears,

They would bring empires down about our ears

And by the example of our Declaration

Make everybody want to be a nation.

And this is no aristocratic joke

At the expense of negligible folk.

We see how seriously the races swarm

In their attempts at sovereignty and form.

They are our wards we think to some extent

For the time being and with their consent,

To teach them how Democracy is meant.

"New order of the ages" did they say?

If it looks none too orderly today,

'Tis a confusion it was ours to start

So in it have to take courageous part.

No one of honest feeling would approve

A ruler who pretended not to love

A turbulence he had the better of.

Everyone knows the glory of the twain

Who gave America the aeroplane

To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.

Some poor fool has been saying in his heart

Glory is out of date in life and art.

Our venture in revolution and outlawry

Has justified itself in freedom's story

Right down to now in glory upon glory.

Come fresh from an election like the last,

The greatest vote a people ever cast,

So close yet sure to be abided by,

It is no miracle our mood is high.

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs

Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.

There was the book of profile tales declaring

For the emboldened politicians daring

To break with followers when in the wrong,

A healthy independence of the throng,

A democratic form of right divine

To rule first answerable to high design.

There is a call to life a little sterner,

And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.

Less criticism of the field and court

And more preoccupation with the sport.

It makes the prophet in us all presage

The glory of a next Augustan age

Of a power leading from its strength and pride,

Of young ambition eager to be tried,

Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,

In any game the nations want to play.

A golden age of poetry and power

Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.

--by Robert Frost

Two By Robert Frost

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

Whose woods these are I think I know.  

His house is in the village though;  

He will not see me stopping here  

To watch his woods fill up with snow.  

My little horse must think it queer  

To stop without a farmhouse near  

Between the woods and frozen lake  

The darkest evening of the year.  

He gives his harness bells a shake  

To ask if there is some mistake.  

The only other sound’s the sweep  

Of easy wind and downy flake.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  

But I have promises to keep,  

And miles to go before I sleep,  

And miles to go before I sleep.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

JFK speech honoring Robert Frost following the
poet's death
"The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual 
mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary 
figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover's quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he 
must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much 
honored in his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. 
Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fibre of our national life."