1961 January 20

When John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated, I was in school at Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela.  We had a radio and we listened to the ceremony in class.  I remember Robert Frost reading a poem, but that he had problems.  What actually happened was that he had written a special poem called "Dedication" for the occasion, but the sun that day was so bright he was blinded and couldn't read the poem.  He had to recite one he knew by heart.

The Gift Outright

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 will become.