Robert Frost, for JFK

‘Power corrupts,” John F. Kennedy observed, but “poetry cleanses.” On Inauguration Day in 1961, Robert Frost shared the dais with Kennedy, Chief Justice Earl Warren and outgoing President Eisenhower to read a poem he had written for the occasion. It was a cold, bright day, and Frost, then 87, squinted in the glare. He struggled to read, then stopped, and instead recited from memory “The Gift Outright.” Frost’s unheard poem passed into history as one of his lesser works, yet it contains verses as apt today as they were nearly half a century ago. Herewith the closing lines of “Dedication -- For John F. Kennedy, His Inauguration”:

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Glory is out of date in life and art.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.

--

Copyright 1961, 1962 by Robert Frost, Copyright 1969 by Henry Holt & Co. Reprinted by arrangement with Henry Holt & Co.