ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The Gift Outright, a short poem of 16 lines, has summarised the history of colonisation in America, and the growth of love and devotion that the settlers came to shower on this land. It is one of the best patriotic poems ever written about America and American people.

Detailed explanation-2: -For instance, in the first line: ‘The LAND was OURS be-FORE we WERE the LAND’S’. Frost was fond of using blank verse in his poetry: since it is close to the rhythms of regular human speech in the English language, it reflects his homespun, colloquial style.

Detailed explanation-3: -Robert Frost’s most famous poems included “The Gift Outright, ” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, ” “Birches, ” “Mending Wall, ” “The Road Not Taken, ” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Detailed explanation-4: -Possessing what we still were unpossessed by, Possessed by what we now no more possessed. We were withholding from our land of living, And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Detailed explanation-5: -The poem was first published in the Virginia Quarterly Review in Spring of 1942. It was collected in Frost’s volume A Witness Tree in 1943. According to Jeffrey S. Cramer the poem may have been written as early as 1936.