Robert Frost Quotes
The land was ours before we were the land’s She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people ...
President-elect Kennedy had asked the poet to write and present a poem for the inaugural.
Robert Frost, 1874-1963, U.S. Poet Laureate, Inauguration poem, “The Gift Outright,” January 20, 1961
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The line, like many in good poetry, has several levels of meaning. The most obvious is that we had explored and conquered the land, before we became a nation.
Arguing that the Arabs will never agree willingly to a Jewish state:
The early Zionists had an understanding of how they were then perceived by the Arabs who had been living in land that was to become Israel. Like most other parts of the world, the land of Israel has been conquered and reconquered over the years. The area had been a Jewish kingdom in the immediate centuries before the birth of Christ. They had conquered it from the tribes that had conquered it from the Egyptians who had also conquered it. Then the Romans conquered. After that there were Muslims, Christians, the Ottoman Empire, the British and finally Israel was formed. Throughout this entire history, both Arabs and Jews had lived on the land along with and under the authority of whoever was the latest conqueror. In the hundreds of years before the establishment of the state of Israel, the Arabs had been in the majority. The 20th century saw a large influx of Jews who immigrated, purchased land and settled. There had been low level conflict as the Arabs became concerned that with the immigration
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.
