The Gift Outright

Gifts are positive and negative in the poem. In the historical context, the gift of the land is a positive for the Americans or the colonists who benefit from turning the territory into an independent nation. The gift is a negative from enslaved Black people, Indigenous people, and people from the lower socioeconomic classes. For them, the gift leads to exploitation, brutality, death, war, displacement, or an impoverished status quo.

In a close reading of the poem, gifts remain positive and negative. First, the gift creates a burden, as the Americans must give themselves to their land. As the speaker notes, “Something we were withholding made us weak” (Line 8). The positive (the acquisition of land) comes with a negative or a catch: To fully utilize the gift that is the country, Americans must “surrender” (Line 11) their individuality and become one with the country. Put another way, Americans must sacrifice and act selflessly. They have to put the country's needs ahead of their pleasures, and relegating desires isn’t always pleasant.

Frost’s speaker explicitly links gifts to a negative when, in a parenthetical, they state, “(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)” (Line 13). The gift, an ostensibly good thing, created death and destruction.